


Sun in our eyes

by persephx



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, BAMF Darcy Lewis, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Heavy Angst, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), ShieldShock - Freeform, Slow Burn, and that shit hurt, because we all remember infinity war, now i'm trying to fix it with some shieldshock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-06-18 03:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15477045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephx/pseuds/persephx
Summary: After seeing her best friend crumble into ashes, Darcy has to find the way to make everything right again. Or at least, she has to find someone who will.





	1. Chapter 1

Jane had been in the middle of a sentence when it happened. She had been rambling about something Darcy didn’t even understand, and then, she had disappeared. Well, not actually disappeared, she had… crumbled. Darcy’s mind wouldn’t stop comparing it to Voldemort’s death at the end of the second part of the Deathly Hallows movies. It had been so unreal. How could someone as real as Jane Foster disappear like the bad guy of a bad adaptation of a movie about magicians? It was… It was crazy. It was as crazy as a blond falling from the sky in the middle of the dessert. It was as crazy as electrocuting the God of Thunder. It was as crazy as Dark Elves invading London. It was… Darcy didn’t exactly have a normal sense of normalcy, and still, this was unbelievable.

The first thing Darcy did was try to call the police, but her call got rejected. Then, it came to her mind that maybe this was not only happening to Jane. Maybe this had nothing to deal with Thor. This time… maybe this time the freakish stuff had happened before anyone could prevent it. She turned on the tv, hoping to find something, anything, there. Instead, she was welcomed with an emergency broadcast and a loud ring that stayed with her even when she muted the TV. Her hands were trembling, and her lips felt dry. What the fuck was happening? It was ten minutes later when she thought about calling her family. She picked up her phone and waited as it rung and rung. Nobody picked up. The second time she tried, a mechanical voice told her all the lines were collapsed.

She took a deep breath and looked at what Jane’s body had left behind. She couldn’t even cry for her friend as she wondered if she should sweep. If that was Janes body… If it was what was left of her… Before Darcy could even finish that thought, she vomited. With her throat burning and puke in the tips of her hair, she finally felt the tears coming to her eyes. She blinked twice, and the tears fell down her cheeks. The first sob took her by surprise, but soon she was sobbing and gasping for breath. She was crying more than she had ever cried.

Looking at the ashes that were spread through the floor made her chest clench, but she couldn’t look away. That was what was left of her best friend. She would have followed Jane anywhere – she had followed Jane anywhere, but now… She was alone.

A new sob ripped it’s way from her chest to her mouth, her tears burning paths in her cheeks, like acid. They were punishing her. In what kind of world she was alright and Jane Foster died? In what kind of world a woman so useless like her would be left alive and Jane, who actually had something to offer to the world would vanish like that? Darcy Lewis had an unfinished Political Science degree and field experience as the babysitter of a thirty-year-old astrophysicist, what was she going to do in that kind of world alone?

And then the thought came as fast as lightning.

Not alone.

Darcy had been sworn she would never been alone. Had anyone else made that promise, she wouldn’t believe it, even less now, but… a god? A god’s promise had to mean something, right? Thor’s promises always meant something. That big golden retriever would never leave her hanging, now she just had to find him.

Which was pretty much impossible.

When dealing with a guy who was able to travel anywhere in the galaxy, how was she supposed to find him? She didn’t think Thor had learnt how phones worked in the time they had been apart, and even if he had, a phone wouldn’t work if he was in space. But. If Thor heard about what was going on with the Earth, he would come. Big guy was fond of the Earth, and Darcy didn’t doubt see-it-all Heimdall would tell Thor about what was going on. So, if Thor wasn’t already on Earth, he would come soon, and where would he go? To the Avengers. To what was left of the Avengers. To Tony Stark. Next step was finding the man who had disappeared not so long ago. Easy peasy.

As her mind focused again in the present, her eyes started seeing again, and her heart clenched violently at the view of the ashes. She took a shaky breath and nodded. She had to take them. Darcy could not stomach leaving them there. What if they were able to solve this? What if there was a way of bringing Jane back? What if she needed them? And… She just couldn’t leave the only thing she had left from her friend there. She wasn’t ready to completely loose her.

With her mind was reeling as she thought about her plan, she looked around for a place to put the ashes in and then saw a box. It had been a gift from Thor and Darcy didn’t exactly know why Jane kept it there – or just why she kept it, considering how she had ended things with Thor. With a quick step, she walked towards the wooden box. It didn’t have anywhere to fit a key, it didn’t even look like a box, just a cube of wood, but Darcy had seen it open, she swore she had seen it open.

“Oh, come on, open up you bitch,” she muttered angrily, and with a soft click, the box actually opened. “I… What?” It took her a second – her disbelief stopping her in her tracks – but then she carried the box to where she had been sitting and picked up a broom.

She felt her mouth turn watery and the burn of vomit almost make its way towards her mouth, but she closed her eyes and swallowed until she felt like she wasn’t going to puke anymore. She took a deep breath, she opened her eyes, and she started to sweep.

Maybe that was the most unbelievable thing, that she had to sweep her friend off the floor. Literally. Her friend’s rests.

She had to stop and swallow again.

She put the ashes – Jane – inside the box and shut it, watching how the box turned into a seemingly unopenable cube of wood. She took the box and looked around. With a sigh, she went to the door.

Only to come back.

Jane Foster, astrophysicist had a lot to give to the world, and Darcy was not going to leave all that in a remote town in Michigan. She took her friend’s computer and copied everything into a pen drive. It was years of work and she would need a couple of hours and more than one pen drive, but it would be worth it. Maybe something if Jane’s notes could help them. Maybe it could help them get help. She was not going to risk it.

She would also need clothes, she realized. Clothes, as much food as she could take and… What else does one bring to a mission so vague? How would she know? Fighting the tears, she decided to prepare her clothes while the files were transported. She made her way to the second floor of the house, where the rooms were, and picked up a bag. She filled it fairly quickly, all her jeans, her comfiest t-shirts, her underwear and a pair of shoes. Not all of it fitted, so she took one of Jane’s bags and put the rest there along with a suit – just in case – and her toiletries. She thought of getting one of Janes jumpers just for her comfort, but she knew it wouldn’t fit her, and she decided not to take it. She moved to the cramped kitchen and fitted everything that couldn’t get bad in it.

It took her two hours to realize that she was behaving as if it was the apocalypse. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at the bag in her hands. She was supposed to search for Tony Stark – somehow – and ask him to lead her to Thor, but… She didn’t know what the situation out there was. Maybe she should have checked that before. Maybe she… What if what had happened to Jane had happened to everybody? What if she was the last person in the world? What if…? Her chest was tightening to the point where it was difficult to breathe. Her hands felt weird, almost numb, they didn’t look any different when she looked at them through the black dots of her vision, and, holding back a sob, she brought her trembling hands to her face and pressed her temples. Her breathing was erratic and short, like every time she inhaled, not enough air came to her lungs. Her mind was reeling, her mind went to Jane, to what had happened. Maybe what had happening to her was happening to Darcy now. Maybe…

Darcy took one hand in the other, digging her nails into her skin. She forced herself to hold her breath, and then inhaled once, taking a huge breath and then holding it again. She did this until she felt her chest untighten. A panic attack.

She was not the only person left, she told herself. If something like that had happened and she had come out of it alive, other people would have too. Darcy had nothing special that would leave her alive after something like that, and what was happening was not a film.

She was not the only person left, she repeated herself.

She looked at Jane’s computer and realized it had finished copying the files. She grabbed an empty pen drive and continued copying stuff. She didn’t know what could be useful but better safe than sorry.

With nothing left to do while waiting for the files to get copied, she took a deep breath and decided to go outside, check what was going on in the town. It had been at least three hours since Jane had… crumpled – at the lack of a better word – and she wasn’t sure if people would be at the streets, but she had to find out. She had to see if anyone knew what was going on.

The town where they had been staying for the last few weeks was not very big, everyone knew their names and Darcy could see why, two newcomers were a novelty in a town like this, if they were scientists, even more. Jane hadn’t gotten out of their rented house that much, too focused in the discoveries she thought she was making, but Darcy knew the names of almost half of the town and was on speaking terms with at least a few of them. One of them was Owen, who owned an electronics’ shop not so far from their house. Darcy decided to go there first.

Maybe in another reality where she was just going to pick up something for Jane, she would have been lazy, and she would have taken the car, but she needed to see the streets. She needed to see what was going on. She grabbed her keys and gave a lingering look to Jane’s box before she got out of the house.

The wind hit her in the face, refreshing at first, horrifying then. If people had turned into ashes, there was a big possibility that the wind would be carrying particles of… of them. She held back a wave of nausea and went back inside to get something to cover her nose and her mouth. Once she was set, she started walking.

The town was empty. It looked like a ghost town taken from a bad horror movie. She would have laughed if she had seen this on a movie, seeing it, gave her chills. Every time she had ventured outside, she had seen someone in the streets, there was always someone to wave at her.

She could see little mountains of ashes in the streets. She could see ashes in the place of smiling kids or scowling old people. Her chest started to feel tight again and she had to close her eyes and focus on her breathing to push back another panic attack.

When she made it to Owen’s shop, it was empty. There was another monticule of ashes near the shelves, but nothing else. Darcy damned herself. She wouldn’t find anyone now, the people who were left would have gone hiding or at least they would have gone searching for answers. Now, it was three hours after the incident, nobody was left in the streets because the streets were scary.

She was about to leave the store when she heard a door closing in the back of the store. She didn’t even doubt it for a second before going in that direction. She was a huge movie consumer and she knew how people reacted in horrible situations like this, so maybe it was a thief or other kind of criminal, but she had to see them, she had to see the proof that she wasn’t alone. _Not alone_. As she was walking towards there, she saw the man who had made the sound. He had greasy black hair and a skinny frame. His skin was pale, so pale that it seemed like he would recoil if the sun hit his skin. Or shine.

“Owen,” Darcy breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm impressed with how much love this fic is getting! And it's only the second chapter! Thanks to everyone who left kudos and commented!

Owen was moving stuff around while she waited for him in the living room. She was holding her own hands in her lap and trying to stop the urge to look for more ashes. She had never been at Owen’s apartment – they didn’t have that kind of relationship – and if the situation had been different, there would be nothing stopping her from looking around, but now she was too scared. What would she do if she found some ashes? Say sorry as if that was going to fix anything?

Darcy kept her eyes on her hands, but her mind was far away.

She was thinking about her plan, thinking about her next steps. Finding Thor would be impossible considering he wasn’t restricted to the Earth like she was, and while going for Tony Stark would have been a good plan in another situation, the man was missing. If the Government couldn’t find him, Darcy sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do it either. However, someone else might know how to contact Thor, another avenger, but who? Maybe Stark’s best friend, James Rhodes. The man had no relationship with Thor – as far as she knew, which wasn’t much – but maybe he knew the way to contact him, maybe he knew where he was…

“If you’re watching, this would be a great moment to send Golden Boy over here, Heimdall,” Darcy muttered, looking up at the ceiling.

The only answer she got was from Owen in the kitchen “did you say something?” He walked into the living room carrying two big glasses of water. He handed one to her and then proceed to drink the other one in big gulps. “You don’t want anything else, do you?”

“No, thanks, Owen,” she said. Waiting as he finished his water, she nibbled on her bottom lip. “What happened?” she asked as soon as he was done.

He seemed reluctant to speak, his eyes focused in a spot of the couch. “I don’t know,” he let out slowly. She was about to call bullshit, but he continued. “Everything was okay one moment and the next, Ms. Thompson was… Fuck, I don’t know how to call it. She disappeared. Suddenly she was just… ash.”

“It happened the same with Jane,” Darcy said, nodding understandably, “she was talking about her science stuff and then nothing.”

Owen nodded. “I went to the street for help after it happened,” suddenly, he dragged his eyes to hers, “but it had happened to other people too, not just Ms Thompson… There were ashes everywhere and everyone was scared and shouting.”

“Have you heard any kind of official statement about this?” she asked, just in case. Unsurprisingly, his answer was a shake of the head. “Okay, maybe we have to wait a couple of days, stay next to a TV or a radio, if you and I are okay, then people who can explain this will be too.”

“Stay here,” he said, and it broke her heart how breathily it sounded. It was a scary situation, and it downed on her how empty the apartment was. Of course he wanted company, everyone would. But Darcy couldn’t give it to him.

“I can’t,” she said. “I have a friend who might be able to help, I need to find him.”

“Who is he? A CIA agent? FBI?”

“He’s… He has ties with the Avengers,” she said slowly, she doubted anyone would believe her if she said Thor, God of Thunder had been her friend once. She looked at Owen, fixing her eyes in his and trying to show how confident she was. “If someone can fix this, it’s them. I need to find this guy and tell him about what’s going on. He’s really smart and he has means that will help, I’m sure.”

“I… Can I go with you?” He pressed.

Darcy, she realized, wasn’t comfortable with Owen going with her. She couldn’t exactly point out why, but she felt like she needed to do the trip alone. She had to face Thor alone, and tell him that Jane… Darcy sighed. “I think it would be best if you stayed here. Keep in touch with the rest of the…” calling them survivors seemed too much, so she stopped herself “the rest of the people in the town. And keep a TV and a radio close. Whatever happens it will be broadcasted there.”

Owen looked like he was going to keep pushing, and Darcy was ready to put her foot down, it wouldn’t matter much if they parted ways in bad terms, she preferred not to, but she would if he kept pushing her. But then he just nodded.

There wasn’t much else to say so she picked up the glass and took a big gulp of water before standing up. “I need to get back and prepare,” she said.

“If something happens and you can’t get to your friend… Well, you probably have somewhere else to go, but if you don’t, you should come back here, I—we will help you.”

She smiled softly and nodded. “Thanks Owen, I… I really appreciate this.”

When she made it back to the house, an hour and a half later, she saw that the files were still exporting and wondered what to do next. Going over her plan – if it could even be called a plan – seemed like a good idea. How could Colonel Rhodes react if she barged into the Avengers’ facility demanding help to find Thor? He didn’t know her, it was most likely that he wouldn’t help. She wouldn’t blame him, really. Everyone was scared, everyone would be demanding answers, everyone would have thought about the Avengers, like she had done. It was not the perfect plan, but it was still the only one she had.

So, how would she get to New York? It was at least a twelve-hour ride from Michigan, not counting any kind of stop she would need to do. She didn’t have enough gas, and she really doubted gas stations would be open in this almost-but-maybe-not-quite-apocalyptic-situation. Maybe she could… steal it? It made her anxious, she had never really committed a crime, but if it was needed...

She shook her head and decided to cross that bridge when she reached it, or at least, when she picked up the car to reach it.

When the files finally finished exporting, she picked up her purse and the bags she had filled with clothing and food and brought everything to the car, setting Jane’s box in the passenger seat. She sat there for a couple of minutes and then sighed. She walked back into the house and covered Jane’s stuff with her bed’s sheets. Just in case, she left a note.

She went back to the car and turned it on. She would need to cross the gas bridge soon, she thought, she had enough gas for a couple of hours, but it wouldn’t last much longer. With a ball of anxiety in her stomach and her throat closed up, she started driving.

Darcy was a big consumer of every kind of movie, and as everyone, she had seen a ton of post-apocalyptical movies, which were dictating most of her moves now. It was only after she had been driving for forty minutes when she realized that she had let the movies influence her too much. This situation was almost apocalyptical, but so far, it was nothing like in the films. And she had plans to go to the Avengers’ facility in New York, which was only twelve hours away. Then, why had she taken the food? If she was just on the run, looking for a place to hide, it would have made sense, but she was not doing that. She had a plan. She had a plan.

“Well, now I can at least eat my anxiety away,” Darcy murmured, turning her head to the box.

It seemed to give her an answer, too much down to earth for it to be Janey, too horrible. “What if they don’t let you in the facility? What if they kick you out when you get there?” it seemed to ask.

Darcy started nibbling her bottom lip again. If they didn’t help her, she didn’t know what she would do. She needed help. She had to do something to fix this mess. She had to…

She took a deep breath and tried to steer her mind away from those thoughts. Again, she would cross that bridge when she reached it. The Avengers were the good guys, though, they wouldn’t just say no and kick her out, right? The good guys would help her. They would let themselves be helped by her, even if there wasn’t much that she could do. They surely wouldn’t just say no and close the door in her nose. They…

Deep breath. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she told Jane’s box. It didn’t exactly stop her anxiety, or the knot in her throat, but she couldn’t think about it. She didn’t know the Avengers, she didn’t know how they would react, but she had to think they would help her. She had to focus on the good outcome, and then deal with the situation if it turned bad.

As soon as she saw a gas station, she stopped and refilled the tank. The place was as empty as everything else, there wasn’t even a rest of ashes inside, and that made her wonder what had happened. She stopped herself. Darcy hadn’t had this much alone time basically since she had started working for Jane, and it apparently made her imaginative, and in a situation like this, it was not welcomed.

She filled the trunk and debated on leaving some cash in the counter, but then decided not to. Who would get it if she did? With a nervous glance around, she got back in the driver’s seat and drove to the road again.

“I’m hungry,” she stated half an hour later. Somehow, speaking to Jane’s box made her feel better, less alone in the sea of nothingness in which the road had turned. She was well aware that Jane couldn’t hear her, she wasn’t delusional enough to think that somehow those ashes were still Jane and that if she talked to them, her friend would hear the words. She didn’t think that, she was talking to them because it made _her_ feel better.

“I’m pretty sure this is me nervous-eating again,” she muttered as she stopped the car. “And I shouldn’t be eating and driving, but what cops are going to appear to give me a ticket, right?” She snorted to herself as she got out of the car and walked to the trunk.

She had to rummage through the insides to find the crackers she was looking for. When she had then, she opened the box and fitted one in her mouth. She looked at the sky, it was getting dark.

“Maybe I should stop and sleep,” she wondered out loud. “Me having an accident because I fell asleep driving isn’t going to help anyone.” She pondered about this for a while, later deciding to drive a couple of hours more and then try to stop and sleep in the backseat.

She had the car’s radio turned on, and the static made her nervous, but she needed to know if they made any kind of official statement, if they said what had happened. Her experience told her that they would probably lie if they said anything, but she needed to hear it.

Eventually, her eyes started to feel heavy. Her phone said it wasn’t even ten, but Darcy guessed the day had been too emotional draining, she shouldn’t fight sleep for much longer or maybe she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.

It wasn’t long until she saw a service area to stop at. She hadn’t seen anyone in all the time she had been driving, and for a moment, she had even considered just parking at the side of the road, but then she had decided against it. The road couldn’t be alone for that much time and leaving the car in the middle of the freeway at night when anyone would see it didn’t seem like a good idea. So, she took the exit to the service area.

There, she was surprised to find other two cars. And people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you see Steve and Darcy haven't met yet, and it won't happen in the next chapter either, but I hope that doesn't make the story boring for you, I swear the meeting will be coming soon! Also reuniting with Thor! And tragedy!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'd just like to thank you all again for the love this fic is getting, there are not a lot of post-infinity war fics with Darcy and I wanted to write one but wasn't too sure about the whole thing, I'm glad to see you guys like it! I'm also going to say that you can follow my tumblr too, the url is the same as my username here persephx :) I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!

Darcy looked at the people in front of her warily, but with a deep breath, she got out of the car. They were watching her closely too and got up from where they were sitting when she opened the car’s door.

“Hello,” one of them said. It was a man, tall and muscly, maybe if Darcy had met him in the store, she would have swoon, but now it only intimidated her. She repressed the urge to get back in the car and leave.

“Hey,” she muttered, “do you guys… Do you know what happened?”

“No,” another one answered, a woman. She had deep blue hair and bronze skin. If Darcy had met her at the store, she probably would have swoon too. “Just that people have turned to ashes. Some have. We don’t know why it didn’t happen to everyone.”

“I don’t know either,” Darcy said, even if it was pretty much obvious.

She looked at the other two people in there. Two men. One of them was blond, short but hunky, the other one had black hair and was taller and slimmer, and they were holding hands.

“Where are you headed?” the first man asked.

“New York.”

That made them all look at her even more intently, she felt their stares waking prickles in her skin and she shifted uncomfortably. “We come from New York,” the blond man said. “People are leaving the city, not going in.”

“I have a friend I need to find,” she explained, “the only way to finding him is going to New York.”

“I don’t think you’ll find him there. The city is chaos,” the other man said. “I don’t think any city is safe right now. You know how people get when things go wrong.”

“It’s not exactly the city where I’m headed,” she said, “I don’t think so, at least. I’ve never actually been where I want to go. But if I can find my friend it will be there. People will help me find him.” She didn’t add the ‘if I’m lucky’ that was pressing so urgently at the back of her mind. Because that was the thing: she wasn’t sure they would help her.

One thing at a time, she reminded herself.

“What if your friend is dead?” the woman asked harshly. Darcy couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath at the woman’s words.

She hadn’t thought of that. What if Thor… No. Thor was an alien. A god. Thor probably wasn’t even on Earth. Even if he were, he was stronger than your normal human being, he would have survived the crumbling. Darcy hoped she was right.

“Billie,” her partner – or at least who Darcy thought was her partner – hissed.

“If I saw my three-year-old turn into ashes, what makes you think that you can be sure your friend is alive?”

“I have to think that he is,” Darcy said, feeling her lips twitch. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I have to think that he’s okay, and I have to think that I can find him, because if I don’t then everything will be lost. And I need that hope, don’t you?” She was speaking softly, not being able to even imagine the pain of seeing your kid crumble. It had been bad enough for Darcy when she had seen Jane, but your own three-year-old… That was even worse.

“What? Need hope?” the woman – Billie – asked, and then she let out a humorless laugh. “I lost hope when I saw people disappear in front of my own two eyes.”

“You don’t think there’s a way to fix it?” Darcy asked before she could stop herself.

The look in the eyes of the people in front of her gave her an answer. “And who’s supposed to do that? The Avengers? Do they even exist anymore? Or Tony Stark? Who disappeared before anything could happen?” The man talking snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Is that why you’re going to New York?” The blond man asked. “I don’t know how you’re imagining it to be, but they don’t open their doors to anyone with problems.”

“I know Thor.” That made the others stop in their tracks. Maybe telling them this wasn’t the best thing Darcy could do, but she had to give them this. “I’m looking for him because I know he will find out how to fix this. He… Well, I’ve seen the things that guy has under his belt. He could save us from shady stuff like Dark Elves. Maybe he has a solution for this too.”

“That’s a lot of trust to put into a guy who isn’t even from this planet,” Billie’s guy said.

Darcy frowned. “I trust that guy with my life. A life he has saved more than once. He has saved your lives more than once, too. If he can help, he will, he’s like that and he would never let this continue like it is if he can help it. He will find the way to make things right again.” She put a lot of faith in Thor, but how could she not? She’d been friends with him while he and Jane had been together, she had heard about the stuff he had done both in Midgard and in Asgard, she had seen him in action for god’s sake.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Blond guy’s partner said with a gruff voice.

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Let’s hope so.”

The silence that followed her words was stiff and uncomfortable, so Darcy signaled back to the car “I stopped to catch up with sleep so… Yeah.”

“Good night, New York,” the blond said with a quirk in his smile. Darcy snorted and nodded.

She locked the car, not really trusting the people outside – they had just met, she wasn’t about to get murdered or something before she could reach the Avengers’ facility – and tried to get comfortable in the backseat. It was difficult, she noticed. Backseats were definitely not made for sleeping, the seats were too hard and not big enough, but eventually, she fell asleep, all the exhaustion catching up to her.

When she woke up the next morning, the first thing she did was take in the car. In the back of her mind, she had hoped to wake up only to realize that it had all been a nightmare. It seemed more likely that she had imagined the situation than to think that there had been a real problem that had caused people to crumble. Of course, it had not been a dream, she wasn’t that lucky, she sighed. Next thing, she checked the time in her phone. It was a few minutes past eight in the morning. She shouldn’t waste any time, there were at least eight hours left until she arrived to New York, and honestly, the faster she got there, the better.

She looked at the cars still in front of her and wondered if she should say something. They didn’t know each other, she didn’t need to tell them, but maybe she should anyways. Maybe it was part of the situation, this feeling of her owing them something. It was probably because she they were some of the first people she had seen since this had started.

In the end, she didn’t need to make a decision because with three taps to her window, the blond guy revealed himself outside of her car. She unlocked it and opened the door, getting out to realize that, even if the guy had seemed short the night before, he was still taller than her.

“Good morning, New York,” the guy said.

“My name is Darcy, you can stop with the apocalypse clichés,” she said, smiling lightly. References usually didn’t go past her head.

The guy snorted. “I’m Marty,” he said. “I was going back to the car and saw you were awake. Are you leaving soon?”

“Yeah,” Darcy answered, “yeah, I want to get to New York as soon as I can.”

Marty nodded. They stayed in silence for a couple of minutes, Darcy had to stop shifting uncomfortable every few seconds. “Bob, he’s my husband, he has never really believed in the Avengers. He said we expect too much of them, that we rely on them a lot and that. He used to say they were useless and they were making us useless too.” Darcy fought the urge to kick the guy. Useless. Sure, if fighting the forces of evil is useless, the Avengers were the most useless of all useless people. “We used to argue about it,” Marty adds, and that makes Darcy stop the angry retort that was already forming in the back of her mouth. “I trust them.”

“They are worth trusting,” Darcy muttered. She had never meet them, but she knew Thor, and she had seen the news and everything they had done. If they were so bad, they wouldn’t go around saving as many people as they could.

“I hope you’re right with your superhero friend. I hope he finds the way to help us.”

Darcy nodded, she wanted to say, ‘I hope so too’, but instead said “he will”. She couldn’t tell him about her uncertainness or she would be crushing the hope she had put there in the first place.

“The bathroom here is not so bad,” Marty said waving his hand in the general direction of said bathroom. “It’s not exactly clean but it works alright. Good luck, Darcy.” With that, he turned and left towards his car.

Darcy looked at the bathroom he had waved at. It was inside a road shop and with a sigh, she picked up some clothes and made her way there. She cleaned herself as well as she could and relieved a bladder she hadn’t even noticed it was full. She changed her clothes and then got into the car.

Ridiculous, she thought, to feel this reticence to leave these people. She didn’t know them. She didn’t owe them shit. But at the same time, she didn’t want to be alone. She sighed again and got into the car.

After just a couple of seconds of wondering, she got out of the car again and sat in the hood of the car with something to eat. The other guys hadn’t woken up yet, but it was somewhat reassuring to look at the cars knowing at least _they_ were alive. Thor would be too, Darcy thought, and he would help her.

Going back to the road was easier with that thought in mind.

“I kind of feel like Tintin,” she told Jane’s box. “I guess you’d be Milou, then,” she snorted. Yeah, comparing a wooden box to a dog. Comparing a wooden box that has your friend’s ashes inside to a fictional dog. Darcy was sure she was losing her mind.

As she was nearing Cleveland, she started to see cars. At first, she had been excited, because cars meant people, and people meant she would not be alone with only a box to speak to. But it hadn’t taken her too long to realize that the cars she was seeing were empty. They were empty and abandoned in the street, like she had seen in the films. Darcy’s mind, unhelpful as ever, wondered if the cars had been really abandoned by people in panic or if the people driving them had crumbled like Jane. When she saw that a few more cars were crashed against the traffic barriers or even other cars, she had her answer. She couldn’t begin to wonder about the panic people must have felt when seeing other drivers disappear. Again, her mind unhelpfully wondered if someone had died because of the crashes. Just in case, she didn’t look at the cars too closely.

The sea of empty cars was broken when she saw a black van that was occupied, and a few guys wearing black clothes and big guns were wandering around. She didn’t know if she had to feel relieved or scared, so she decided to wait to see what they did. Being scared wouldn’t help her, anyways.

They signed her to stop as soon as they saw her and didn’t pretend to hide that some of them grabbed their hands more tightly. One of them – the leader, she guessed – walked towards her and tapped on the window twice. She swallowed before lowered it.

“Where are you going?” The man said in a gruff voice.

Darcy took a moment to look at him. He was older, around fifty, if she had to guess, his skin was tanned, his face crinkled, and his eyes were dark brown, he was also sporting a big moustache. He looked like he was from a cop show. The little plaque in his chest identified him as J. Fitz.

“New York,” she mumbled.

“Why?” His questions were more like demands, and it was clear that she wasn’t in a situation to show how good she was at being a smartass, so she held back.

“I need to find someone,” she said.

The man looked at her with narrowed eyes and Darcy wondered what he was seeing. A young woman with crumpled clothes and big eye bags, maybe her eyes revealed how scared she was at the situation. Maybe she just looked like she was a mess.

Whatever she looked like was enough to make the guy stop trying to be macho man, and he actually smiled at her, although it was more like a grimace. “The cars are blocking the road,” he said, and Darcy didn’t fail to realize that even his voice had gone softer. He then proceeded to tell her how she could go around the blocking. “Good luck, girl,” he said before turning.

Darcy couldn’t believe her luck, so she dared calling him back. If he had already assessed her and decide she was not a danger, maybe he’d tell her what was going on.

“We’re expecting orders,” he said when she asked. “Just keeping the order while we wait for the big guys to say something. But don’t be scared, the worse has already happened.”

Darcy held back a snort. “Yes, now we only have to fix it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who don't know it, Tintin is the main character of a series of comics created by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, Milou is his dog, who was also his companion on his adventures.


	4. Chapter 4

She had seen some people rushing on the streets of the city when she had been going around the block on the main road, but apart from that and those shady guys that had stopped her car, she hadn’t seen anyone. It was like everyone was waiting, expectedly. Or maybe people had fled the city as Marty said they had fled New York City.

She was leaving Cleveland behind and the cars started to be more and more sporadic until eventually she was the only one in the road again. She didn’t know if she felt better at it or not. In a way she could feel like it was normal, just not a lot of people in the highway, there were no cities to see that everything was horrible, that reality had turned into a nightmare. On the other hand, it was so lonely to not see even the traces of others.

She was not alone, she had to remind herself.

And she had to do it, because if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be strong enough to get to New York. If she didn’t, she’d just stop the car and cry until everything was over. She felt lost, only her self-imposed mission of finding Thor was giving her strength to stand, to keep going. And she had to keep going, or Jane would beat her up from wherever she was.

She kept driving until she realized that her mind had kept wandering around Thor, and Thor’s chances to be alive, and Darcy’s chances if Thor wasn’t alive. It was happening again, like it had in the house, her breathing too short to actually be of use, the corners of her vision filling with dark spots, her body too hot, too cold. She stopped the car, not minding that she was in the middle of the road –nobody was there anyways–, and got out as fast as she could, stumbling. She used the asphalt and how it prickled on her knees to ground her. Eventually, she managed to even her breathing. She closed her eyes and sat down with her back against the car. It was too hot, but that also helped her ground herself.

“What the heck is happening to me?” she muttered, this time to herself. If she had evolved from talking to a box to talking to herself, was that a good or a bad thing?

Before she could start thinking about that or get into the car, she heard another vehicle’s horn. She turned her head and saw a brown 4x4 slowing until it stopped a few feet away from her. A woman stuck her head out of the passenger’s window. “What are you doing there?” she asked.

If Darcy didn’t know better, she would say the woman was stoned, but who in hell would get stoned after something like this?

“Uh, sitting,” Darcy added, not really wanting to go in detail.

“Cool,” the woman said, and yep, she was definitely high. “You mind moving? Kelsey over here is an impatient driver. We haven’t crossed a car in basically all the way and they have still managed to get driving rage.”

The person in the driver’s seat said something that Darcy couldn’t catch, but it made the stoned woman laugh. Considering her state, Darcy suspected it didn’t take much to make giggle.

“Yeah, sorry I was…” she didn’t finish the sentence, but she got up and opened her car’s door.

“You okay?” the stoned woman asked.

“Yeah, well, as okay as someone can be,” she snorted.

The car started again and moved just enough so the windows were somewhat aligned. From this angle she could see the driver. Short brown hair and definitely not drugged. Or in rage, it seemed. “Where are you going?”

“New York,” Darcy answered. In the back of her mind she laughed at the fact that everyone she had encountered had asked her where she was headed. New York had turned into the new hello, it seemed. “You?”

Also New York,” stoned woman said.

“Mary wants to go where the Avengers are,” Kelsey said, rolling their eyes, as if they thought it was a stupid idea. “Apparently there are groups of people there, demanding to know what happened. She thinks they’ll say something about it soon, and that hearing from the source would be way better than to hear it on the radio where stuff could be manipulated.”

“I’m also… I’m also going there,” Darcy said slowly. Groups of people there? She hadn’t expected that. What were those people expecting? They really thought they would get answers by just being there?

“Cool,” Mary said, and then turned to Kelsey, “see? It’s not a bad idea.” She turned her eyes back to Darcy, “you see, Kelsey here, they are a pessimist. I, personally, am an optimist. That’s why we get along so well.”

“Sure. It has nothing to deal with the fact that we’ve known each other since we were three and we’re in too far to turn back,” Kelsey retorted.

Darcy couldn’t help but smile, their banter seemed familiar, even if she and Jane hadn’t known each other that much time. She only realized she was smiling sadly when they stopped their mocking and looked at her.

“Maybe we could go together,” Mary said smiling dreamily. A stoner’s smile was very distinct, and it was something Darcy knew from when she had gone to uni. Political Science was definitely not save from marijuana.

And then the words registered in Darcy’s mind. Before she could say anything – it was going to be a no – Kelsey hissed “Mary!” and then turned to Darcy. “Look, she’s high. It’s not like I have anything personal against you, but I don’t know you and…”

“It’s okay,” Darcy said, smiling reassuringly, “I wasn’t going to say yes. I don’t know you.”

Kelsey smiled, their face showing how relieved they were. “Good.”

“But we’re going to the same place,” Mary whined. She crossed her arms and looked ahead grumpily. Sometimes dealing with high people was like dealing with kids.

“That is true,” Kelsey mused. “We should meet. We’ll have to stop for gas in a few hours, how are you doing?”

“I’m good,” said Darcy, congratulating herself for filling the tank before going on her adventure, “but I think a break from driving will be nice, we can meet when you need to stop. Speak without us being in cars this time.”

Kelsey smiled, appreciating the humor. “Yeah, we can do that.”

She started the car and Darcy snorted to herself and looked at the box sitting in the sit next to her, if that had been Jane in flesh and bone, she would have grumbled something like “only you would go around making friends in the middle of the apocalypse.”

Three hours later, she found herself laughing at Kelsey’s tries to reprimand Mary when the girl had climbed to the top of the car. “You know what? Ya boring, I’m going to sleep now.” And with another word, she got into the passenger’s seat and seemed to pass out.

Darcy looked at her, “is she alright?” she asked looking at Kelsey, who shrugged.

“She’s always like that when she’s high. She turns into a five-year-old.”

They stayed in silence for a couple of minutes, Darcy eating some of her food. She had offered Kelsey a bag of chips but they had said no. It was weird, how at ease Darcy felt in that moment. Maybe it was because she knew they were headed to the same place, or maybe it was just that they gave off a nice vibe. Darcy didn’t know it but she hadn’t felt like that with the people she had met of the service area.

“Why is she…” Darcy started to ask. She stopped, leaving the question in the air. If Kelsey wanted to answer, they would, if they didn’t it’d be alright his Darcy, she was just curious.

“Mary is… well, she’s very sensitive and this whole situation was too much so I told her I’d take care of her if she needed to relax,” Kelsey explaining, looking at their friend in the passenger’s seat. Then huffed a breath. “I was expecting something like napping for three days. Or a hot bath. Or even whiskey.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow and smiled. “She’s nice, even stoned.”

Kelsey stilled at that, but they didn’t take their eyes off of Mary. “Yeah, she is,” she mumbled after a while.

She was surprised to find out that maybe their feelings weren’t just platonic. Darcy turned to look at the sleeping woman too and silently wondered if she returned Kelsey’s feelings. Maybe in another life she would have demanded an answer, she would have tried to ply matchmaker, but things were different now, even Darcy felt different.

Was it crazy? That she felt so different only a day after the incident? People could change, but drastic change came with time, right? Or maybe traumatic situations also caused such a fast change. Darcy didn’t know, but she was sure watching as her best friend crumbled to ashes was traumatic.

“We should get back on the road,” Kelsey mumbled, pulling her out of her mind.

“We should,” she nodded, but didn’t move. After a few seconds, she turned to look at Kelsey’s brown eyes. “Have you changed since this started?”

That made them still again, but in a different way. They turned slowly and looked at her. “I can’t imagine going out partying if that’s what you mean.”

“I just… I almost feel like a different person than who I was before the crumbling.”

“The crumbling, huh? Is that how you’re calling it?” Darcy hummed as an answer and it made Kelsey’s lips twitch. “It’s descriptive. I like it.” There was a pause, but eventually they answered Darcy’s question. “I think I’m not the same. This situation… it has changed a lot of things. I can’t imagine myself going back to how I was. So, to answer your question, yes, I have changed.”

“Do you think it’s a bad thing?”

“Not necessary,” Kelsey shrugged. “We’re in a new world and we need to adapt. If someone fixes this, however they might do it, then maybe we could worry about that, but until then…”

“Do you think someone’s going to fix this?” Darcy asked.

“Not really,” Kelsey said, grimacing. Darcy was expecting that answer already, by the way they had been acting during the conversation. “I’m not sure I think there’s a way to fix this, to be honest.”

“Why are you going to the Avengers’ facility then?” It was a question out of curiosity, not malice intended.

“Mary wanted to go, I wanted to stay with her,” their answer was accompanied by a shrug. “If she has any hope left she should have it. Going there will make her feel better and I’m not losing anything by going.”

Darcy nodded and didn’t say anything else. She was about to suggest they went back to the road, when Kelsey spoke again. “Do you think this can be fixed?”

Slowly, she let out a breath. “I think so, yeah. Or at least, I think there are people who will try their best. I think I need that hope, I need to think this can be fixed somehow and I’ll find myself sitting with my best friend and listening to her talking about science stuff and concepts I don’t even begin to understand.” She smiled softly, and then shook her head. “I also think the Avengers can do that.”

“That’s why you’re going there?” They asked, tilting their head to the side.

“Yeah, in a way.” She didn’t get into details and Kelsey didn’t ask for them. She did trust them and Mary more than the people in the service area, to whom she had told her plans, but for some reason she didn’t feel like she should tell them, so she didn’t. Most people acted incredulous when she told them she knew Thor, and she understood. She didn’t want her new friends?, to think she was lying. Or crazy.

“We should get going,” Kelsey said again.

This time, Darcy nodded and walked to her car while Kelsey got in the 4x4. They hadn’t talked about what would happen when they got to the facility, and she was glad because she had no idea on how to make contact with someone who could call Thor down here. She looked at Jane’s box. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Then she huffed a breath. “So many bridges to cross.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve ( aka steeb ) will be making an appearance soon, buuut not yet :)


	5. Chapter 5

Darcy was glad that she had found Kelsey and Mary, or that they had found her, because once they got to the State of New York, she had no idea where to go. It would have been different if the Avengers had still been at the Tower at NYC, but Darcy could understand the change of scenery. Thankfully, Mary had known someone who had known someone who had worked for someone who had worked once in the facility – or something like that, Darcy had gotten lost at the explanation – and knew where it was, so she was following their car.

It had been almost funny when she had seen their car pull over and stop a few miles ago. When Mary had woken up somewhat soberer, she had made Kelsey stop to properly introduce herself to Darcy.

“I’m not always like that,” she had said with a blush in her cheeks. “I just…”

“It’s okay,” Darcy had answered smiling, “no judgement from me, dude.”

She chuckled, remembering how Mary’s body had relaxed visibly at that.

She was pulled out from her thoughts when she saw the number of cars in front of her. There were so many cars that they blocked the road even for bikes. She stopped and got out, walking towards Kelsey’s car, parked just in front of her.

“What the hell?” She looked at the cars and sighed. There was no way they would get anywhere with their cars, and everyone else seemed to have thought that, because the cars were empty. It was different than how cars were left empty after the crumbling, these cars were somewhat organized, and none of them were crashed.

“I think we’ll have to work from here,” Mary said. “The good thing is that the path is pretty easy to follow.

“Yeah, we’ve found the yellow brick road,” Kelsey said. Darcy snorted, and Mary punched her in the arm. “Hey! No violence! Or the Avengers will come to… you know. Avenge me.”

Darcy snorted again. “I’d take that rather than having to walk all the way over there,” she confessed.

They got their stuff from their cars, Darcy damning past her for getting two bags plus a computer and several pen drives. How necessary was having two bags of clothing? When Kelsey saw her, she frowned. “What are you expecting, to move there?” they asked.

Actually, yes, Darcy thought. Of course she couldn’t just say that without telling them about Thor, and she still had a feeling about talking about that with them. The bridge was coming near, but it wasn’t there yet, so Darcy decided to wait until she said something. So she just shrugged with embarrassment. “Would you believe me if I said I left most of it at home?”

Mary snorted, looking pointedly at her bag, a lot smaller than Darcy’s.

“Keep that up and I’ll make you carry them,” she warned, but the other girl just grinned cheekily.

“Why don’t you leave one at the car?” Kelsey suggested. “We’ll get it back when you need it.”

Darcy stopped and thought for a second. That would be the most intelligent thing if Darcy was planning to just stay outside the facility, as she had let the others think. “I…” she cleared her throat. “I’d prefer to take them along, you know, we have no idea what’s happening.”

“You’d feel more secure, right?” Mary said, “I can totally understand that. Let her live, Kels.”

Kelsey didn’t seem that convinced but nodded. “Sure. Just know that carrying all that is going to mess with your back.”

Darcy wanted to laugh. Worrying about someone’s back was so mundane… it was something from before the crumbling. She hadn’t realized she had been making a difference between things from before the incident – stupid, mundane things like someone hurting their backs because of carrying too much weight – and things from after the incident – stuff taken from films, like having to learn how to survive, or cities so empty it was difficult to see if anyone was still around.

It took them more than half an hour until they started to see the people gathered around the fence of the facility. Darcy didn’t know what she had been expecting, but in her mind it was definitely a lot less people. She stopped and looked ahead, then, she sighed. That would be a good moment to know how the hell she was going to make contact with someone who could let her in.

As she walked with Mary and Kelsey, the ball of anxiety in her stomach grew heavier and heavier. “We should go to the main door. If they say something it will be there, right?” Mary suggested excitedly.

Kelsey and Darcy nodded and walked with Mary. It was obvious that they weren’t the only ones thinking about that, because the area around the door was filled with other people. She had been expecting stoners like Mary, hippies, those kind of people. Instead, there were very different types of people, all gathered around the Avengers facility. There were old people, as well as teenagers, and Darcy didn’t see any kids, but she knew some people would have certainly bring their kids along. Somehow, Mary led her and Kelsey nearer the door, where everyone was, and found a path that let them on the first row.

“That skill must have been really fucking useful in concerts,” Darcy muttered. Mary looked back and winked.

A few feet away from the door, at the other side of the fence, stood a guy in a suit. He was looking at them – them being all the people there, not specifically them three, although it would be helpful if he focused his attention in them – and keeping a straight face. He was like you’d expect a security guy to be, hair military short, tall, big body which meant big muscles, mouth set in a straight line, and even sunglasses. Darcy wondered if his name was something like Agent T or something like that.

“Do you think we could catch his attention?” she asked. Maybe if she convinced him of her ties with Thor, he would let her in. The problem was how would she manage to make him believe that she, as harmless as she looked like, was friend with Thor, God of Thunder. Maybe if he knew him, if he was aware of the actual puppy that Thor was, it wouldn’t be so surprising, but still. How many people had claimed to know an Avenger to demand they let them in? Darcy could bet that it had been a lot.

“Why would you want to catch his attention?” Mary said, frowning.

“Do you think you can flirt your way to get us some information?” Kelsey added, then they frowned too. “I don’t want to doubt your charms, but I don’t think you’ll get much with a guy like that.”

“Yeah, no, I—“ Maybe it was the time to come clear, to tell them that she knew Thor and that she needed to get to him, or someone to get to him for her. Darcy sighed. “I didn’t come here to know what had happened. Well, yeah, I did come here for that but… I know Thor. Like, personally know him. You know his ex? Jane Foster? She’s my best friend, and… well, Thor and I are friends too. Or were. And I need to speak to him… I…” at the looks she was getting from her new friends, she stopped.

“You know Thor?” Kelsey asked, and she nodded slowly. “You are friends with Thor?” Again, Darcy nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell us this?” asked Mary.

Darcy looked away. “Not everyone believes it,” she said, it wasn’t really a lie. “I also didn’t want you to… I don’t know, ditch me on one side of the road.”

“We wouldn’t do that,” Mary said solemnly, to what Kelsey nodded.

“I didn’t think so but I didn’t want to risk it.”

The air around them goes stiff and uncomfortable, and maybe in a situation that wasn’t so pressing, Darcy would have damned herself. But right now, she needed someone to let her into the facility, so she could speak with whoever could contact Thor for her. Maybe they’d have contacted him already. Maybe he was around there, wondering what had happened to Jane and Darcy. And at that moment, the darkest part of Darcy’s brain supplied that maybe he wasn’t thinking of them at all. It hadn’t been much since Jane and Thor had broken up (since Jane had stood him up) but Thor was a busy guy and… Maybe he didn’t care about them anymore? Darcy’s ball of anxiety grew. What if he saw her there and just didn’t care? And if he sent her home? Darcy would have done all that for nothing. She could feel her throat closing up. If Thor didn’t want her there, what would she do? She had to do something, and Thor was the only way of doing something she had. And would he really leave her alone? His promise had been before he and Jane had split up, what if he was just saying?

Mary put her hand on Darcy’s shoulder, grounding her, bringing her back into reality. Slowly, Darcy’s fears retreated. “So, how are we gonna get that man to let you in?”

“Yeah, I doubt telling him you are friends with Thor would help,” Kelsey nodded, their voice somewhat harsh but not really rude. Maybe they didn’t like that Darcy hadn’t told them the truth, but they were going to help her anyway.

Darcy shrugged, feeling self-conscious. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I wasn’t expecting… this.” Kelsey and Mary looked at her with a question in their eyes, which made Darcy want to grab the blanket from her youth and turn into a burrito. Instead, she cleared her throat and looked at Agent T again. “I didn’t know there would be so many people here. I didn’t…” she sighed “I don’t know what I was expecting, but in my mind, it was going to be easy, you know? I’d find someone who would be nice to me and who would call Thor for me and…” Darcy shrugged helplessly. She had been dumb.

Before she realized what was happening, tears were rolling down her cheeks. Mary rushed to her side. “Hey, Darcy, don’t cry, c’mon,” Kelsey said, putting their hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “We’ll find a way, don’t cry. Come on, breathe with me.”

They managed to calm Darcy down, and she damned herself for seeming so weak to them. She had to get a grip on her emotions or she wouldn’t be taken seriously, she knew it. She breathed slowly and dried her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying her hardest to get her voice to be even. She didn’t do a great job at it, but both Kelsey and Mary took a step back, which was good. “I’m sorry,” she repeated when she was even calmer, this time her voice sounded almost normal.

“It’s okay, girl. I get it,” Kelsey said.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of pressure,” Mary added, nodding with her head. “Hell, I don’t know what I would do if I had to go up there and talk with an Avenger. And Thor. Isn’t he like a prince or something?”

Kelsey elbowed Mary, who stopped talking with a sharp intake of breath. Darcy huffed and smiled at them. “Yeah, but Thor is cool. He’s not that intimidating once you get to know him. It’s just… All the other stuff.”

Mary nodded again and if Kelsey hadn’t elbowed her again, she knew she would have gone into another rant about Darcy’s situation. She was glad because she really didn’t want to hear how deep into shit she was.

“We’ll find a way,” Kelsey said, their tone felt like a promise. Darcy took another deep breath and nodded.

Not much later Kelsey and Mary set their sleeping bags in the floor – because of course they had taken sleeping bags with them, unlike Darcy who had somehow imagined every door would be open for her once they arrived there. She wanted to hit her head against the fence. She had been naïve. She had been dumb.

She had always taken pride in not being as dumb as the other kids in her class, both in high school and university, she didn’t take stuff for granted, she was mature. But not mature enough, she sighed. Or maybe she was just not made for those kinds of situations. Well, she was definitely not made for a situation like that. She breathed again, the bars of the fence digging into her back to ground her, she wasn’t dumb, or immature, she was naïve, yes, but she couldn’t blame herself for that. She repeated those words like a mantra, trying hard to believe them.

She didn’t know how much time has passed while she was staring into space and repeating those words in her mind, when she was startled when someone touched her shoulder. She looked and Agent T was standing just behind her in the other side of the door.

“Don’t touch the fence, please,” he said with a gruff voice.

Darcy was stunned for a minute, but then she jumped and stood up. “I need your help,” she said quickly. The man, however, was already backing off. “Please. I—I need you to call Thor. I don’t know where he is, maybe he’s inside, maybe he’s in Asgard. I need to speak to him.” That made the agent stop and turn. He didn’t walk near, but it was enough to make Darcy hope. “Please,” she whispered.

“Look, girly, everyone in here thinks they need one Avenger or another. The truth is that you need to get home. You need to get the people you love near and wait to see what the hell happens.”

“He’s my friend,” Darcy insisted.

“Sure. And I’m drinking buddies with Captain America.”

At that, he turned again and didn’t turn his back for nothing Darcy said. When he was back to the place he had been when Darcy had first seen him, she slumped. She wasn’t going to get anywhere, she realized. She’d have to wait and see if she could come up with another plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know, the not steve thing is not even fun anymore, BUT HEY, he's coming very soon, I swear. I hope you guys liked this chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I watched Infinity War again and I'm sad :)

Turns out, Darcy didn’t have to come up with another plan. It took them two days more after she and the others had arrived, but eventually the Avengers came out of their fancy building with serious faces and an official statement.

It was half past ten when the big metal gate opened, and everyone shut up. It was funny, to see all the people gathering there to shut up at once, expectant, everyone waiting for the same thing. Three people were walking through the gates, a group of at least five armed agents were walking behind them. Capitan America was in the middle, with the Black Widow and Thor at each side. Was it going to be that easy? Really.

But of course, the answer was no.

Capitan America had a sober face, as every time he spoke in public, but he didn’t look as much as America’s good boy as he had in the past. He wore his hair longer, and his face was framed by a bushy beard. That was what hiding did to people, Darcy expected. Why was he the one giving the statement, anyways? Wasn’t he supposed to be a criminal? All forgotten, it seemed, in the light of these new events.

His words were very vague, just saying that an external force had caused the damage – yes, he had actually used those words, and then he had winced because calling the death of millions of people “damage” certainly wasn’t the best way to proceed – and that the Avengers and forces from all across the world were trying to find the best solution. He didn’t promise to bring the people back, but his words… Maybe he was hoping to do that too but didn’t know if it was possible.

The problem was that everyone there wanted to hear the words better. Everyone was pushing forward to see that it was indeed Captain Steve Rogers talking. Darcy, Mary and Kelsey were pushed to the back. Thor – who had changed so much since Darcy had last seen him – was keeping his eyes in the front, his face serious and tired. From there, she wouldn’t be able to get his attention.

Too soon, they were turning their backs. She yelled Thor’s name, but she wasn’t the only one shouting. Her voice was swallowed by other people yelling stuff. Some demanded to know more, some were damning the Avengers for not stopping this, as if they had just opened the world’s doors for this to happen. Darcy didn’t have time to be angry at those people, but if the situation had been different, she knew she’d be getting into a fight in that exact moment.

Darcy managed to make enough space for herself in the first row by the time the Avengers were already too far to hear her words, even if the people around her weren’t yelling like that. “Thor turn back you fucking puppy,” she said, her throat already burning because of the strain. “If you don’t turn and look at me I swear I’ll taze you again.” Of course, there wasn’t even a sign of the god hearing her words. She growled “Yeah you’ll be calling me Lightning Sister then, you fucker.”

They were almost at the door of the facility, BUT Captain America stopped walking, and so did Black Widow and Thor, both of them turning to him, as if they didn’t know why he had stopped. He ignored it and looked back over his shoulder. “C’mon, Thor, look. Look back. C’mon.”

Her heart was beating loudly in her ears and somehow the noise of the other people seemed to become something of a background sound. Slowly, as if it was a movie, she saw the Captain grab Thor’s arm and motioned him to look back. And Thor did. “Oh fucking hell,” Darcy said, maybe in frustration, maybe in relief.

And then, somehow, Thor’s eyes fixed on her. He was too far to know anything else, but he was looking at her, or at least, her general direction, which meant he had to be seeing her. Energy buzzed under her skin, the excitement and the fear and every emotion she had felt the last few days came to her. And then, Thor took a step in her direction, almost shyly. Then another, and another, with each step he seemed more confident. The Captain said something else, but Thor didn’t even look in his direction, he just kept walking towards Darcy.

Was he taller than the last time she’d seen him? He seemed taller. And wider. How could someone have so many muscles?

Then, Darcy realized she was trembling. She didn’t look away from Thor, who was only getting nearer and nearer, but she had to link her hands, trying to stop the spasms.

Once Thor was finally before her, both of them surrounded by people who had fallen silent, she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Thor didn’t seem to care, he just smiled sadly and hugged her. She hugged back, feeling her eyes burn with tears again, she didn’t let them fall, though. Not in front of so many people.

“Darcy…” he whispered, and his voice was rough, and it wouldn’t have surprised Darcy that much if he broke into tears. The guy’s emotions were strong, just like him.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me big guy,” she whispered back.

It was almost like she was expecting it to be a dream. They hadn’t seen each other in so long, more than three years, and after all that had happened the last few days… Seeing him really felt like she was dreaming.

 “Where’s Jane?” he asked letting go slowly.

At that question, Darcy only wanted to pull him back into her arms, but instead she took a deep breath and shook her head. “She… She crumbled.” Thor nodded, looking down. With this, he was better hiding his emotions.

After a few seconds he raised his eyes and focused them in Darcy. “Why did you come here?” he asked, his voice soaked with curiosity.

His words felt like five different kicks to her stomach. A wave of coldness washed over her, settling on her middle and for a moment, she thought she was going to puke. Instead, she swallowed over the knot in her throat. “I wanted to help fix this. I need Jane back and you’re the only guy I know who could make that happen,” she said. Her voice wasn’t as even and serious as she had hoped for, but it was still something.

Thor shook his head. “I can’t fix this, Darcy,” he said, “I don’t know how.”

“You never do, Thor, but you end up figuring it out. I want to help.”

The god nodded. “Then you should come inside,” he said, motioning her towards the facility.

She told him her things were with Kelsey and Mary and getting there was a bit weird because everyone had their eyes fixed in them, and they were silent like ghosts. When they reached her friends, the first thing she picked up was Jane’s box.

“I used this to… You know, keep…” her voice lost its strength and she wasn’t able to finish the sentence. Thor nodded. “I couldn’t leave her there…” Darcy added quietly.

“I understand, Darcy,” he said, placing his hand in her shoulder. “It was a good idea.”

Making their way back to the gate and then to the other side of the facility turned out to be even weirder. The silence had turned into hushing, but thankfully nobody was directly speaking to them. When they reached the Captain, Darcy half expected him to demand what the hell was a girl like her being let inside, but he just walked besides them, not opening his mouth. It was Thor, actually, who spoke once the doors of the facility closed behind them.

“Steve, this is my friend Darcy Lewis,” he said, and it warmed Darcy’s heart that Thor still referred to her as a friend. “She’s here to help.”

That did surprise the Captain, who – although he tried to be discreet, tried being the keyword – looked her up and down, like he was assessing her. “Nice to meet you,” he said with an even voice, and although there are no real traces of it on either his face or his voice, she knows he’s skeptical. “What is… Well… If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, what is it that you can do? To help?”

Darcy felt a cold sensation wash over her. Of course. The Captain wanted to make sure she was useful, and he needed facts. And the facts were that Darcy didn’t have anything special that made her help.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, readying herself to the embarrassment of admitting she was just a scared – terrified – girl with big hopes and that there was absolutely no reason to not throw her out in that exact moment. Except, before she spoke, Thor did it for her.

“Darcy was there when I came to Midgard,” he said, sending a smile in her direction. “She and Jane helped me find Mjölnir. She was also in London when the Dark Elves attacked. She is brave, my Lightning Sister.”

Darcy wanted to hug him, but it was fair to say that Darcy always wanted to hug him. She didn’t, though, she just smiled at him thankfully. She was still completely useless but at least she knew Thor thought highly of her.

The Captain seemed to trust Thor’s judgement because he just nodded and walked away with an excuse. It was clear that he still didn’t think Darcy would be of help – he was right – but Darcy would seek him and speak to him later, when Thor wasn’t near.

“They have a lot of rooms here,” he explained, starting to walk in the opposite direction than the Captain. Darcy followed him. “Yours will be the one next to mine.” He then paused for a moment, looking at her with soft eyes. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Darcy smiled back at him, feeling so much relief that she felt the tears she had been holding back coming into her eyes. “Not at all, big guy. I’ve missed you.”

“Yes. I have missed you too.”

The room she was led to was bigger than every other room she had had. It was fancy, too, not too surprising considering the facility was Tony Stark’s. The bed was so big Darcy was sure it would fit three of her and they wouldn’t be touching.

Darcy didn’t want to be alone, and Thor seemed to know this, because he stayed, sitting in her bed while she got her stuff organized. “I don’t know if it could help in any way, but I brought all of Jane’s work,” she told Thor. “We should tell St…” then she stopped herself. Because Tony Stark was not there, he had disappeared.

“We’ll tell Banner,” Thor said, nodding to himself, and then he looked at her. “Stark is… Well, we don’t know where he is, or if he…”

“Or if he crumbled.” Of course. Superheroes would also be in danger of crumbling. It hadn’t cross Darcy’s mind, but it made sense that they weren’t save of that. Their powers weren’t enough to fight something like the crumbling.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry you lost your friends, Thor,” Darcy whispered, and walked towards him.

They hugged, and finally, Darcy let her tears flow. She was safe. She was as safe as she could be. Thor didn’t know how to fix it, but he would find out eventually. And Darcy would try to help him, because what else would she be doing? She would help him, even without powers, even without Jane. Darcy would be useful.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update took me longer than usual, and for that I say sorry, but hey, it's an exciting chapter! You'll see! I'm also working on a one-chapter story with winterhawk if that's something you guys are interested about. If not, just enjoy this! I'll be back soon with another chapter soon!

Darcy had never had trouble falling asleep in new places, thank god for that because with Jane they were in a different place each month. However, falling asleep in her fancy bed at the facility proved to be useless. She would wander around if she wasn’t so scared of crossing paths with someone she who didn’t know who she was and didn’t stop to ask questions before shooting her or something. Instead, she stayed lying in her cloud of a bed, with her eyes opened and fixed in the ceiling.

She didn’t know how she would be of help to the Avengers, but there must be something she could do, right? She had a good resumé in superhero stuff. And she had helped Jane with her science stuff even if she only knew about political science. This was something similar… kind of. It was the same principle.

Darcy bit her lip and breathed in. She wanted to be useful.

She knew she wouldn’t make a difference, not really. She wasn’t powerful in any sense to make a difference. But if she could do _anything_ to help, to get Jane back, she would do it. Whatever it took, she would do it.

She fell asleep eventually, because the next thing she knew was that someone was knocking loudly at her door. She opened the door rubbing her eyes, but all the fatigue went away when she saw Bruce Banner standing there.

Suddenly, she felt very self-conscious in her pj’s, which was understandable. The man was like Jane’s science celebrity, big brain big anger problem. All in all, he was not someone you stood in front of in your pink jammies.

“Uh… Doctor Banner…” she said hesitantly.

The man smiled at her almost shyly, he was holding his wrist in a nervous way. “Hi. You’re Darcy, right?” then he winced, because it was obvious that she was Darcy. She nodded anyways. “We’re having a… meeting, Thor said you should be there too.”

That was surprising and at the same time not surprising at all. Of course, Thor would trust Darcy to be useful, he knew she wanted to help and he hoped she would be able to, but that didn’t explain that the others – whoever those others were – agreed to let her into their meetings.

“Of course, I… I need to change,” she waved at her body, as if it was necessary, and the man nodded stiffly. “It won’t take me more than five minutes,” she promised, and she closed the door.

What the fuck does one wear to a meeting with superheroes? It wasn’t like she had a lot of things to choose from, and she definitely wasn’t going to wear that sit she had fitted in her bag, so she settled with her usual clothing, jeans and a wool sweater.

When she came out of the room, Banner didn’t say anything before he started to walk. Darcy nodded to herself and followed him.

The place was big and fancy, which, again, didn’t surprise her a lot. The walls, the floor and the ceiling were white, the doors were white, the only source of color were the occasional plants and a few paintings. It was pretty impersonal, blank. It was not a place of familiarity.

When they reached their destination, Banner walked into the room first, and Darcy was glad about it, because once she walked in, every conversation stopped, and every person in the room fixed their eyes on her. She didn’t know where to look first. One woman had a spear with her, she was standing right behind a young girl with her hair in two buns that reminded Darcy of Princess Leia. Some other avengers were also there, Captain America, Black Widow, and who she guessed was James Rhodes – the only Avenger not wearing his gear, but it was understandable, considering his suit was made of metal. There was also – and Darcy had to check she wasn’t hallucinating – a raccoon, with clothes, and a gun. Thor was sitting next to him instead of the Avengers, and Darcy took note of that. There was another person, standing near the wall, and if it hadn’t been white as everything else, she was certain she would have missed him, he looked like a monk by the clothes he was wearing and his sober expression.

“Uh, hi,” she mumbled, and even she was aware of how it sounded more like a question. She held back her cringe, though. She also repressed the urge to change her weight from one foot to the other.

“Darcy! Thor said with a big smile, “come, sit, we are planning our next move.”

 She nodded and walked towards the sit next to Thor. She felt their eyes take her in, and as uncomfortable as that felt, she faked she didn’t know it was happening. It felt weirdly similar to when you arrive late to class and you slowly have to make your way to the back, and everyone is in silence and looking at you, judging you for interrupting. That was something Darcy had had to gone through quite a lot of times during her years of high school and college, so it almost felt familiar. Of course, having literal superheroes giving you the stinky eye isn’t exactly like having your pathetic peers do it. Still, it was almost comforting.

“My next move is going to Thanos and go for the head this time,” the raccoon said with a deep voice, which made Darcy realize she had been expecting him to have a squeaky voice.

“For all we know, he might be dead,” the spear-woman said, with a thick accent and a serious voice.

Dead?

“With the power of the infinity stones, I doubt it,” Thor added.

Infinity… stones?

“Thanos is powerful, but you don’t think he would have survived an axe being buried in his chest, do you?” Banner intervened, his voice was at the same time soft and frantic.

“Who is Thanos?” Darcy asked hesitantly.

Again, everyone in the room stopped and stared at her. It made her angry for a moment. She wasn’t part of their superhero clique, she didn’t know about people, and Thanos and infinity stones. She just knew she had seen her best friend crumble into ashes.

“Thanos is the cause of all this mess,” Captain America said, after a couple of seconds of silence. “We are not sure where this all comes from, but he spent a long time searching for the infinity stones and when he had them all, he just had to snap his fingers to get half of the population in the universe to disappear.”

“Infinity stones?” she asked, this time directed only to the Captain. No one else had seemed to offer her any answers.

She was wrong about that, because the person who answered her question was the guy dressed like a monk. “In the dawn of the universe there was nothing, then boom! [Big Bang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang) sent six elemental crystals hurtling across the virgin universe. These Infinity Stones each control an essential aspect of existence.”

“Soul, Reality, Space, Power, Time and Mind,” the girl with the Princess Leia hair said, with a raspy voice.

“A normal being wouldn’t be able to hold them. They are too powerful, they would have destroyed him, but he had a special gauntlet made in Nidavellir.”

Darcy frowned at the familiarity of that name, and then it hit her. “Your hammer was made there, right?” At what Thor nodded. “So if they made Mjölnir and the gauntlet, wouldn’t that be enough to destroy it?”

“The gauntlet is not a problem anymore,” the Captain said patiently. “It melted after the snap,” he explained, “we’re not sure what that means, but even so, the damage is done. We need to know what to do now.”

“Do you know what happened to the people who crumbled?” Darcy asked, letting her eyes travel through the room. The tension in the room became thick soon.

“We don’t,” Banner said shortly.

“Some of us think they are somewhere they can be brought back from,” the young girl said.

“Others think they are dead and that we should focus on learning how to defeat Thanos,” added Rhodes, who was crossing his arms and had a serious expression that didn’t hide the tension in his body.

He was worried, Darcy realized, because he didn’t know what had happened with Stark. He was worried because he wasn’t even in the earth, because he had gone after the spaceship of a genocide, and even if he was still alive, how the hell would he come back. Tony Stark was doomed, Darcy thought, and there’s nothing his best friend can do for him.

“Maybe you should do both,” she intervened, “defeating the bad guy is crucial, but if there’s any way we can bring the people back, we should look into that.”

“There’s no proof that they are still alive,” Rhodes insisted.

“I will not stop searching for my brother,” the girl insisted in a fierce voice. It struck Darcy that she couldn’t be too much older than eighteen. What was a girl so young doing there? In the middle of the mess?

The woman standing behind her, put her hand in the girl’s shoulder, but she didn’t react to it.

“Princess Shuri I can understand th—”

He was interrupted. “Don’t continue, Colonel Rhodes. I know what death is. My father died, and he is not coming back. But my brother, my brother is not dead. And I will not abandon him.”

Princess Shuri. That girl was a princess? Darcy had been prepared to meet with superheroes, but royalty was a whole other thing. And what was doing a princess there, anyways. She wasn’t in a position to judge the usefulness of the other people in the room, though, if the girl was there it was for a reason. Darcy would learn about it eventually, probably.

The discussion had continued while she was in her head, and now the raccoon, Banner and the Captain were a part of it. Darcy mentally shrugged and decided to add what had been rumbling in the back of her mind for a while. “There weren’t any corpses,” she said, loud enough to gain the attention of the others. Judging by their faces, they weren’t following what she wanted to say. “I mean, if this guy, Thanos, wanted to kill half of the universe, just kill them and leave it like that, they wouldn’t have crumbled, right? That just seems like too much trouble. They would have dropped dead, like, I don’t know, like they had had a stroke or something. There’d be corpses everywhere, not… ashes.”

Both the princess and the raccoon nodded at her words. “Corpses, yes, and there were none of those,” the raccoon’s voice surprised her again.

The others didn’t seem so convinced.

“I’m not saying it’s irrefutable proof, I’m just saying it’s weird,” Darcy shrugged, feeling the usual self-consciousness that she felt when putting out her ideas. “I think if there’s a possibility that they are alive somewhere, we should look into it.”

“We should,” Captain America said, nodding.

Of course he would agree, after everything that had happened with his childhood friend, he was the last person Darcy expected to give up on looking for his friends. With a pang, she realized that he was not there, Barnes, which had to mean he had crumbled. That triggered a river of pity inside her, after being brainwashed for seventy years, the guy hadn’t had enough? Hadn’t Cap had enough?

It was lunch time when they decided to just end the meeting with a big interrogation mark. Tomorrow, they’d meet again, and they’d come up with a solution, Capitan America had said. Darcy doubted it. It would take them a long time until they reached a conclusion, and they couldn’t start to plan without a conclusion.

She was getting out of the room, wondering what to do next, when the Black Widow started to walk besides her. The woman was beautiful, even with blond hair instead of the red she had always seen on T.V.

“You are smart,” the woman said, and even if it didn’t sound like an accusation, Darcy almost felt like it was, like she had to apologize for it.

“Uh, thanks,” she said instead, with a small smile.

“What do you know about fighting?” the woman asked. Her voice was rougher than Darcy would have expected from a woman with soft features like her, it fitted the superhero she knew she was more.

“A whole lot of nothing,” Darcy said in a joking voice.

It did nothing to soften the intensity of the other woman.

“If you are going to be with us, you need to know how to fight, at least to defend yourself,” Widow stated. “I’ll teach you until it’s time. That will give you a chance to live if they come.”

Darcy was surprised to say the least. Fighting classes with the Black Widow? She wasn’t particularly keen to violence, but she had to admit it was exciting. And useful, she told herself. She didn’t want to be helpless, and she didn’t want the others to have to worry about her sorry ass.

So she nodded, “thank you,” she said softly.

The other woman nodded and walked away. Darcy – from a part of her brain that belonged to before the snap – wondered if she’d be learning how to be so generally cool too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I have added the tag of alcohol abuse, and be careful if you're triggered by alcoholism because various characters in this story drink too much too often.

When Darcy had agreed to train with the Black Widow – Natasha, she had been told later – she hadn’t expected to be awaken at 5 am the very next day to their agreement. If it had been Jane waking her up so early – and her friend had tried to do that more than once – Darcy would have burrowed her face in the pillow until the other had left the room grumbling. But Darcy didn’t know Natasha, and honestly, she was too terrified to do that.

So, instead of trying to bargain for more sleep, even if she definitely needed it after falling asleep sometime past two, she got out of the bed and dressed herself. She didn’t bother brushing her hair, just pulling it up into a ponytail. When she came out of her room, she saw the other woman propped against the wall, she too was wearing gym clothes, but there was no trace of it being so early in her, no sleep in her eyes, no mess in her hair. Basically, she looked perfect, with was kind of unfair, Darcy thought.

“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice raspy with sleep.

“I wasn’t sure you’d own appropriate clothes,” Widow answered, eyeing Darcy’s leggings and ratty shirt.

“Yeah, it wasn’t for this purpose but let’s just ignore that,” Darcy said jokingly. Natasha smiled at her, but it felt more like she was giving her a concession than her being truly amused. It was nice of her, though, Darcy appreciated it.

They made it to the gym, where Natasha walked her through a routine to get her in shape before really teaching her how to fight. Darcy didn’t understand it, but she wasn’t going to complain. Ten minutes after they started, Darcy was heaving, exhausted.

“You are incredibly out of shape,” Natasha commented, looking up from her nails. If she wasn’t so tired, Darcy would have laughed.

“Couch potato meets trained assassin,” she let out, her voice weak. “It doesn’t go well.”

“You’re fine,” the blonde answered with a roll of her eyes. “Do another.”

Darcy felt like she could cry, but crying because a woman trying to help her was making her do exercise was pretty lame, so she just breathed deeply once and, resigned, asked “of what?” The only answer she received was an arched eyebrow, which made Darcy’s stomach drop. “Of everything?” she whined. Again, there was no answer.

After a minute of Darcy considering just lying in the floor until Natasha grew tired of her shit, she got her act together and started again. By the time she was done, she was drenched in sweat and felt disgusting and floaty at the same time.

“We’re done,” said Natasha, and although there was no trace of it in her face, Darcy could swear she was amused, “tomorrow we’ll meet again. Same hour, same place. Hopefully less whining.”

“I don’t think you’ll be spared of the whining,” Darcy said, dropping to the floor. “It’s kind of my self-defense method.”

“Good thing we’re working on another one, then,” she retorted, and left the room.

She was alone in the gym and she didn’t know whether to feel insulted or not. She later decided she was too exhausted for emotions and just resolved to stay lying in the floor for a couple more minutes. Or hours, for all that she cared.

Her plans were ruined when the door opened. And, because her luck was just so good, Captain America walked inside. Of course he would walk into a room where Darcy was drenched in sweat, sprawled in the floor and wearing the rattiest culver t-shirt to ever exist. Of course.

When he noticed her, he stopped in his tracks and frowned at her. “Natasha is going to give me some self-defense lessons,” she said, and even if it didn’t explain why she was lying in the floor, he nodded.

“And how’s that going?” he asked, just a bit awkwardly. It was probably because Darcy was still in the floor and he was towering over her. He was massive from that point of view. Well, he was massive from every point of view, Darcy admitted.

“Well, so far she has exhausted me to death before breakfast, laughed at me and told me I was in horrible shape,” she told him. “Which is true, I guess, because now I’m lying in the floor in front of Captain America and I can’t stand so I’m making an idiot of myself.”

“Oh, well, I don’t go much by Captain America anymore,” he admitted, looking aware, “so you’re making an idiot of yourself in front of Steve Rogers.”

Darcy didn’t comment on the Captain America thing, but she wondered if it had to deal with the whole spending two years escaping from the law. “That’s so much better,” she said instead, “making an idiot of myself in front of hot guys is my specialty.”

That made him snort loudly. “Oh, it is?” he asked, his mouth quirked in a grin and an eyebrow raised.

“Oh yeah. Once I crashed into a closed glass door because I was trying to play it cool after giving my number to a hot dude,” she told him, earning a laugh. “Yeah, everyone else laughed too.” And that comment made him laugh harder.

It felt weird, almost inappropriate to laugh. The world was going to hell and they were laughing. Their friends were probably dead, the alternative even worse, and they were laughing. It didn’t feel right that they allowed themselves that privilege when so many people couldn’t. The Captain – Steve – seemed to realize this at the same time than her, he stopped laughing and briskly told her that he was going to train too. In an alternative universe where none of that had happened, Darcy would have stayed, she would have taken the opportunity to oogle a muscular guy as he was, even more if he was doing hot stuff like bench-pressing or whatever he did. But she didn’t live in that alternative universe.

Instead, she left the room and looked for a place to get breakfast. She had only been to her room, the meeting place and the gym so far, so she didn’t really know where to start searching. The day before, after the meeting, she had settled in her room, not really in the mood to deal with talking raccoons, princesses and monks, and had eaten some more of the food she had taken from Michigan.

She did find the kitchen, but it wasn’t empty. The princess and the woman with the spear were there, whispering, and they shut up as soon as Darcy walked inside. “Good morning,” she said, feeling weird. She had never interacted with a princess and didn’t know how to act around her. Even less if she had someone who could turn Darcy into a _pincho moruno_ if she was disrespectful.

“You don’t know about Thanos,” spear-woman said, her neck high and an eyebrow raised. Darcy shook her head, deciding to keep the comment that she did know about him now that they had explained it to herself. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to help,” she said. She sounded small even to herself.

The woman looked at her with incredibility. “You do not know how to fight, do you? And you don’t have any… abilities. What can you do?”

Darcy pursed her lips and looked at her hands. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Probably nothing, but if there’s any possibility…” she shrugged. The woman kept looking at her and it was starting to make her nervous. “Look, I don’t know if I can do anything. I don’t know if anyone can do anything, but I’ve been in situations involving aliens before, and then I didn’t think I could do something and I was still helpful somehow. I don’t care if what is needed of me is to be a team cheerleader, if it helps I’ll do it. I don’t care.”

“You lost someone,” the princess said.

Darcy bit her lip and nodded. “My best friend,” she answered.

She nodded. “I lost my brother,” a corner of her lips twitched upwards in a sad smile. “I appreciate what you did yesterday. If you hadn’t intervened there wouldn’t be more debate about rescuing our people.”

Again, Darcy felt uncomfortable. “I genuinely think there is a way of getting them back,” she said. “I don’t want to abandon them.”

“What is your name?”

“Darcy. Lewis.”

“I’m Shuri. My brother, T’Challa, was the king of Wakanda,” she said solemnly. “He needs to be back to reclaim his throne. And I, too, I’m here with the hope that I can help.”

“Wakanda… I thought you had super advanced technology there, wouldn’t it be easier to help from a place like that?”

Darcy saw the speared woman tense, and for a moment she worried about having said the wrong thing, but the princess, Shuri, didn’t seem offended. “My country was the battle field for the confrontation with Thanos. My lab was mostly destroyed, as well as most of the houses that surrounded the castle.”

She nodded at a loss of words. “Princess Shuri, we should get back to your training,” the speared woman said, still tense.

“Of course,” the girl answered, and then she turned to look at Darcy, “Okoye thinks I need to learn how to fight, she’s sure that I’ll need it sometime. I can’t see how, but I’m humoring her,” she said in a conspiring voice.

Darcy smiled. “Yeah, Natasha decided to train _me_ ,” she answered. “It can’t hurt to know how to defend ourselves, right?”

“I suppose not,” princess Shuri conceded, “but it’s still tedious.”

Darcy snorted and nodded in agreement. The two women left the room and Darcy started to look in the cabinets in search of something sugary to consume. She found cereal, and it was more difficult, but she eventually found a bowl to drown them in milk. When she was finally done fixing her breakfast, she turned to sit on the table and saw that the raccoon was already sitting there with a bear in his hand. She yelped in surprise, making him took up.

“What,” it demanded, sounding defensive.

Darcy shook her head, “you shouldn’t go around sneaking around people who could drop their breakfast,” she said. Joking with a talking raccoon, what the fuck was Darcy’s life anymore?

The thing didn’t joke back, he just took a sip of its beer.

“You do know that it’s eight in the morning and that drinking at this hour is considered alcoholism, right?” She continued.

The raccoon gave a mean laugh that definitely wasn’t humorous. “I don’t care,” he said, pointedly talking another sip.

“You sh—”

“Look, girl, I’m entitled to drink. Even if it’s this piss flavored thing. My best friend crumbled in front of me. I don’t know where my family is, or even if they are alive, and I have no way of going to look for them because your ships are horribly prehistoric. So, yes, I’m drinking, and I plan to keep drinking all day. Because I can.”

“I’m sorry about your family,” Darcy said. “And about your best friend. But you are not going to be much help if you’re shit faced all day.”

“Watch me,” was the only answer.

They stayed in silence while Darcy ate her cereal and the raccoon bathed in beer and disgust for himself. “So, how did you end up here?” she asked, feeling like the silence was eating her.

The raccoon only looked at her. “Look, you might be a princess, but I have no plan to share my life experience with Your Highness,” he said.

Darcy frowned, “I’m not a princess… Shuri is the princess. The only one in here, as far as I know,” she answered confused.

“You aren’t her?” The raccoon looked at her with narrowed eyes and Darcy shook her head. After a couple of seconds, he shrugged. “You all look the same to me.”

“I’m Darcy,” she said, hesitant.

She got a long look in response and then a sigh. “Rocket,” he said. For whatever reason, it made her happy that he was willing to give that up.  

Before she could ask another thing again, Thor walked into the room and smiled widely at them “Darcy! Rabbit! I’m glad you know each other!”

Rocket the raccoon, and definitely not the rabbit – Darcy decided to take note and tell Thor eventually – just got up and walked away, not even giving Thor a look. The other one didn’t seem fazed by this, and just sat next to Darcy, sleepily sipping at the glass he had been carrying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna do some shameless spam now that I'm here. I posted a Valkyrie/Darcy short the other day and it would be cool if you checked it out! I loved writing about them together and I'm thinking I'll probably do it again in the future, so if you haven't thought about this pairing, dude!, it's great!


	9. Chapter 9

The meeting went pretty much the same way that it had the day before, and Darcy couldn’t help but wonder if it was because superheroes were always that way or if this time it was different because everyone had lost someone. The way she saw it, they were being too stubborn for their own good, and in this case, their own good was everybody’s.

Still, no matter how many times they got together, they couldn’t seem to decide whether they should focus on the victims or on Thanos.

Days on the compound were monotonous and almost boring, which sounded weird to Darcy’s ears, considering what was actually happening. No matter that people had literally crumbled in ashes because some dude had snapped his fingers wearing a magic gauntlet, she woke up unbelievably early, trained with Natasha – it was actually Darcy running around like a headless chicken and heaving after ten minutes of the start of the training – and then crossing paths with Steve, joking for a couple of minutes, then going for breakfast to the kitchen, where she always found Rocket the talking Raccoon – more often than not drinking, no matter how early it was – then showering, going to the meeting, not getting anywhere, and then spending her afternoon with Thor.

It was the seventh day after her arrival, and as it had been happening the whole week, she woke up at five in the morning and found Natasha at her door. As always, the woman was looking amazingly good, but this time, her blond hair was up in a ponytail. That wasn’t a good signal. If that hadn’t been enough, the smirk Widow sent her was.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked slowly.

For a few moments, Natasha didn’t answer, just letting Darcy soak in her smirk. Then, she shrugged with one arm. “I’m teaching you to fight, right? You are going to fight.”

Darcy held back a groan. “And I’m going to hate every moment of it, right?”

This time, Natasha didn’t answer.

It didn’t matter because Darcy already knew the answer. In reality, she was glad that Natasha was kicking her ass. Well, she was glad that she was willing to teach her how to avoid it for the future.

When they arrived to the gym, Natasha headed to a couple of mats piled together. When Darcy was there, she received a hit to the chest that took the air out of her lungs and made her fall on her back.

“Damn! Give me a warning or something!” Darcy wheezed, rubbing the place where Natasha had hit her.

“That’s what is going to happen if you don’t focus,” Natasha said, her voice as levelled as always.

Darcy whined, but didn’t reply, just in case the other woman decided to kick her in the face this time or something. She got up with an effort and looked at Black Widow expectantly.

“I’m going to show you the defensive position,” she said. “And I’m going to teach you how to stop my hits.” Darcy nodded, it was why they were there. Natasha seemed to know what she was thinking, because she rolled her eyes at her. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, Darcy.”

“Nothing with you sounds easy,” she retorted, and she earned another hit, this time on her shoulder and not as sharp. Still she stumbled backwards a couple of steps and pouted at her.

Natasha only gave her a stern look before starting to direct her posture. Darcy didn’t think a centimeter would make any difference, but when Natasha tutted at her and tried to push her right leg one bit to the left, she complied and bit her tongue. “Eyes up.” She pursed her lips and complied again. Natasha put her hands on Darcy’s hips and moved them slightly.

“Does this really make a difference?” She ended up asking, her frustration finally getting to her. Natasha stepped away from her and raised an eyebrow. This woman’s nonverbal communication was on point, Darcy noted. “Okay, I won’t say anything else. Let me bathe on your wisdom, oh amazing assassin slash spy slash femme fatale.”

If she dared, she’d say that Natasha was amused, but there was no way to tell because she kept her usual blank face, and in reality, Darcy was not brave to dare. Not with the Black Widow.

“Take the posture,” Natasha commanded.

Again, if Darcy had been braver, she would have smirked or made a sassy comment or something similar. Instead, she just nodded and tried to copy everything that she had been told to do before. Apparently, she managed to get it wrong. Natasha made some comments to correct her posture. It took her a stupid amount of time to get there again, and by the time she had it, Steve had already walked into the gym. He looked at them for a couple of seconds before heading towards one of the exercising machines there. A smack to the back of her head made her stop looking at America’s muscles and turn her head to a blond who was looking sternly at her.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, correcting the few things she had let slip.

“Good girl,” the woman answered.

They went through a few more things that finally seemed useful. In the end, Darcy was sweating almost as much as the other days. “How did you make me sweat this much!?” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I’m almost as sweaty as with those fucking stupid burpees. Those kill me every time, man.”

“Good,” the woman smiled, and in that moment, Darcy knew she had fucked up, “do fifteen.”

It took Darcy a moment and a sigh, but in the end, she did the damn burpees. “Let me tell you,” she wheezed when she finished, “you are a cruel, cruel woman.”

“I know,” Natasha smirked, this time not hiding her amusement.

“This is basically torture,” she continued without breath.

This time, the blonde tilted her head and pursed her lips.

“Okay, yeah, maybe not torture,” she huffed.

When she exited the gym, she went to the shower and decided to skip breakfast all-together, too tired to think about food. She lied down until it was time for the meeting with the others, and when it was, she dragged herself there. Her body was screaming for her to stop and thank her immensely then she sat down. It took five minutes until everyone was there, and another three for them to start the discussion.

“Okay, the first thing is that we already stuck an axe in Thanos’ chest and it didn’t stop him,” Banner said, taking the lead. “And if he could undo what happened to Vision, he can undo that.”

“Next time, I’ll aim for the head,” Thor said, with a fierce voice.

It was not the first time that Darcy had heard that tone, fierce and determined. He had told her about all he had lost to Thanos. His people had been massacred, the only remains of his home had been that ship, and it had been destroyed, everyone killed. Darcy could understand his ire, his need for revenge.

Still, Darcy didn’t understand, so she turned to Steve, who was rubbing his circles in his forehead and seemingly not paying much attention. Darcy didn’t blame him, it was basically the same argument with different words again and again.

“What’s that about this guy surviving an axe through his chest?” She asked after scooting near to him. She had heard a bit about that, but she had been reticent to ask, trying to guess how someone could survive something like that, no matter how much of an alien he was. She hadn’t found out.

Steve looked up at her a sighed. “You know about the infinity stones, yes?” he whispered, letting his eyes travel through the table and then settling them in hers. She nodded. “There’s one that can… fiddle with time. With it, he reversed some stuff that happened, serious stuff. It’s very possible that he also reversed his wound.”

Darcy frowned but before she could speak, there was a loud noise coming from the back of the building. It took a moment for the others – safe for Steve – to realize it was happening, but then, everyone looked out of the window.

“FRIDAY?” Banner asks hesitantly.

“It appears like an unidentified flying object is landing in the backyard,” the robotic voice answered.

There was at least five seconds of complete stillness, accompanied by silence, and then everyone started speaking at the same time.

“What do you mean unidentified?”

“How many people are there inside?”

“Too small to be Thanos’.”

“I’m going to blow them off.”

Rocket and Thor had gotten up and they were already half way out of the room, and Darcy only doubted for a second before getting up too. “It’s not Thanos,” she said, to whoever would listen to her. “It’s a small ship, right? Thanos wouldn’t come here. Maybe it’s Tony. Maybe he found his way back. Maybe he’s coming back with the magician dude that he went there for.”

Steve was looking at her, biting his lip, he nodded and also got up. They walked side by side – which meant Darcy had to practically run, because Steve’s long legs were taking him in a rushed stroll – and just a few steps behind the raccoon and the god.

Rocket was pointing a big gun to the ship and Thor was glaring at it, when a door opened. It struck to Darcy how similar the ship was to the one in _Paul_. She made herself shake her head to clean it from pop culture. It wouldn’t be helpful.

From the door came out a man. He wasn’t too tall, nor too small, and had a goatee that had become his trademark. Tony Stark. Tony Stark was coming out of a spaceship in gym clothes, his face almost completely purple and red, but whole in any other sense of the word.

“Who are you!?” demanded Rocket, who was probably the only one who didn’t know Tony Fucking Stark.

“Stand back, Rocket,” a gruff voice said, coming from the only person following Stark.

Person… Alien. Her skin was blue and purple, but contrary to Tony’s case, hers wasn’t because of bruises. She had a metal hand – Darcy would have laughed at the irony of loosing one metal armed guy to get a metal armed gal, but the situation wasn’t optimum – and some more metal in her head and her eye.

“Nebula,” Rocket answered. Darcy had been able to see he wasn’t exactly nice to anyone, but there were some people he was less… against than others. By the sound of his voice, that Nebula was on his nice list, which Darcy guessed it meant she was part – or had been part – of his crew; his family.

The woman, Nebula, looked at them, her eyes were black and cold, and Darcy had to repress the fear starting to swell on her stomach. She was on their side, right? If she had gotten there with Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, she had to be one of the good guys.

By the time she and Tony reached the grass of the backyard, Steve’s body besides her had gone even more tense. Before the ship had opened its door, he had been waiting for any sign of a fight, now it seemed like he was waiting for something inevitable.

Stark barely spared them a look before he headed to Banner. “Hey,” he said, putting his arm around the Doctor’s arms. “How’s the dealing with the big rage monster?”

“Could be better,” Doctor Banner answered self-deprecatingly.

Stark started to pull him back to the building, and eventually, everyone followed. “Maybe we can get you a marriage counselor,” he said.

It didn’t go past Darcy how Steve waited until the newcomer had walked past them to start walking again. He probably didn’t trust her to not kill them, he didn’t want to give her his big-target-like back. Darcy couldn’t blame him, but she didn’t think Nebula was going to betray them, not with how much she had probably lost. There was only one reason why she would have come to earth with Tony, and that’s looking for revenge against Thanos. She wouldn’t get revenge if she started killing her allies.

“You’re not a good actor, Steve,” she whispered, looking at him from the corner of her eye. He still looked so tense just touching him would make him snap.

“Not born for that,” he answered gruffly. His eyes were still fixed in Nebula’s back.

“You’re smart Steve, you know she’s not a danger right now,” Darcy said. “You can stop trying to make her be one.”

That startled him enough that he looked over at her for a couple of seconds before redirecting his eyes to her back. “I’m not trying to make her a danger. But she _is_ a danger. One that we don’t know. I don’t trust easily, Darcy, and I don’t want to risk the lives of everyone who lives here just because we didn’t consider this… woman dangerous enough.”

“And it helps you get your mind away from the whole Stark mess, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

That question had to startle him again, but this time he hid it better. “The what now?”

“I don’t know, Sokovia accords, one teammate against the other, basically a civil war. Team Iron Man, team Captain America. Now there’s no teams because there’s not enough people alive. And there can’t be a grudge to hold because there are more important matters. You just want to get away from all this mess. You’re busying yourself with something Thor and Natasha already have covered.”

“You don’t know how well Starks hold grudges,” he limited to answer.

She would have replicated something, but they were already back in the meeting room, and people were starting to settle around the table again. It didn’t go unnoticed how Nebula decided to stick near Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone for the kudos and comments you leave. For some reason at every comment notification that I get, I expect it to be bad, but that hasn't happened! Every comment has been super sweet and I really appreciate that.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! I'm so sorry it took me so long to post! I started uni this week and some other stuff got into the way too and basically I was too exhausted to write anything, but now I bring you this! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

The meeting room seemed incredibly smaller, which had to be a psychological thing, because there were only two new people. It didn’t matter to Darcy’s brain, because it had already decided to feel kind of claustrophobic. It was possible that the feeling was caused by all the tension in the air. Mostly everyone was giving off tense vibes, and it was messing with Darcy’s own state of calm.

Steve and Stark refused to look at each other for more than five seconds, which she would found amusing in any other kind of situation. So much for the two unofficial leaders of whatever they were, right? Okoye hadn’t left Shuri’s side, she hadn’t in all the time Darcy had known them, but somehow it seemed even worse then. Rocket obviously knew Nebula from before, because they were sitting next to each other, and even if they weren’t touchin, they were close enough for it to be obvious. Wong was looking at Stark intently, Darcy didn’t know why, but the other man didn’t look back, no matter how obvious it was that the monk required his attention. Rhodes had embraced Tony at his arrival but now he kept his distance, wearing a stern expression that had nothing to deal with the brutal relief and happiness from before. And Banner had inched his seat closer to Thor’s, closer than it had ever been in these meetings. The blond god remained as he always was, but the strain by his eyes was even more obvious.

“So, who’s going to start their tale first?” Stark asked with fake nonchalance.

It was almost painful to see how Steve reacted to that. Darcy was sure he wanted to jump from his seat and just leave. Instead, he swallowed once and took the lead. “We fought Thanos in Wakanda. There wasn’t much to do, really… We tried to get Vision’s stone out of him safely but there wasn’t enough time. Wanda killed him, she put most of her strength into destroying the stone, but Thanos— he had something that could undo it. It was the time stone probably. We did everything we could but with the Stones… He was pretty much unbeatable. Thor tried to take him with his axe, but Thanos was too strong. He still had the axe buried in his chest when he snapped his fingers. He disappeared and not even a minute after, people started to disintegrate. Not much we could do after that. We’ve been here since then, trying to come up with a plan.”

“Wait. Are you saying Thanos just… Pressed rewind? He undid Vision’s death?” Stark asked with a frown. Steve nodded slowly, which only made the other man get more serious. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“What.” Okoye’s words weren’t a question, they were a demand.

Stark didn’t comment on it. “It was the wizard I followed who had the Time Stone, remember Bruce, Strange? He just handed it to Thanos. He could have pressed rewind to the moment it all went to shit, why the fuck didn’t he?”

“What are you talking about, Stark?” Thor demanded, his tone only a tone softer than Okoye’s.

Stark looked at him before narrowing his eyes. “Since when do you have a brown eye?” he asked, but he seemed to realize it wasn’t the point because he shook his head and refocused. “When Bruce came back to earth a wizard came to collect me. Stephen Strange, he had an infinity stone, Time, and someone had made him the guardians of the stones or whatever. He was kidnapped by Squidward and I went to get him back. Peter Parker, Spiderman, was with me. We ended up in Titan, that’s where Thanos is from. We had a plan to get the gauntlet off but… Things happened, and it didn’t work. Strange ended up giving the stone up to save my life.”

It was obvious, even to Darcy, who didn’t know Tony at all, that the man didn’t think he deserved it. She supposed she’d be feeling the same if half of the universe had basically been sacrificed to save her life. She had nothing against Tony Stark, she generally thought he was a good guy, but she couldn’t stop the small feeling of resentment. She wondered if that Strange guy had known what would happen with Tony’s peace of mind before giving up the stone.

“He would have died protecting that stone,” Wong said, his mouth turned down. “It doesn’t make sense that he would give it up just for your life.”

“Yeah, there was a lot at stake, and he knew about it, right?” Darcy blurted. She closed her mouth when everyone’s eyes fixed in her. She looked down to her hands, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“No, it’s exactly that,” Stark said, gesturing wildly with his hands. “He explicitly told me he would let me die if that meant keeping the Stone from Thanos. Then why would he do exactly that?”

There was a minute of silence before Steve spoke. “You already know why,” he said. Darcy was starting to think she knew Steve well, because she could tell he was holding back a roll of his eyes. She wondered how their relationship had been before the whole Accords thing, maybe they had still had that dynamic of I-fake-I-don’t-like-you-but-I-admire-you.

“I think he had a plan,” Stark put his elbows in the table and his head in his hands. “Before we fought Thanos, he went through different futures, a lot of them, like, millions of futures and only saw one where we won. If he gave up the Stone to save my life, it must be because I still have something to do. Right?”

The last word sounded kind of hesitant, as if he need reassurance. It wasn’t a stretch to think that it was because the doubt was consuming him. Half of the universe had died to spare his life.”

“It would make sense,” Darcy said, when no one answered him. She could feel people’s stares again, but she didn’t let that bother her this time, she just looked at Stark and tried to be give him some comfort.

When they finished the meeting, not much later, Steve fell into step with her, he didn’t say anything, so Darcy looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He just smiled.

“What?” she asked, starting to feel self-conscious. Maybe he was making fun of her for not being able to shut her mouth during the meeting, but Captain America didn’t make fun of people. And Steve didn’t either, no matter how much of a little shit he was.

“I’m just kind of amazed at your people skills,” Steve murmured. “You seem to always know what to say.”

Darcy snorted. “Yeah, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Look, I’m dumb and sometimes my mouth works too fast for me stop it,” she shrugged.

“No, I mean… When Tony said that about Strange, I didn’t know what to say, but you didn’t hesitate for a second before offering comfort. And you don’t know him, so I know it comes naturally.” He had stopped walking, and Darcy was glad they were alone because she wouldn’t have known how to react to someone hearing that.

“You’re a sweetheart,” he answered, feeling her heart beat faster, making the blood rush to her cheeks and neck. Damn.

Steve’s smile for an answer didn’t give away if he had noticed her flush, but she guessed he had, what kind of super soldier didn’t notice small details like that? The thought only made her feel more embarrassed.

“I know you have Thor, but if you ever feel lonely, or if you want someone to return your kindness… I’ll be happy to be there,” he said, and now she could see _him_ blushing.

Darcy wanted to hug him, but she decided to nod and smile at him instead, “thanks Steve, really. Same goes to you.” It downed on her just as she said the words, it was true, she wanted to be there for Steve, he had seemed lonely when she had first seen him, and now she was discovering that she hated thinking of him feeling like that. She had seen him force himself to hide his pain for the loss of his friends, thinking about the sake of the team, and he didn’t want him to put that straight face in front of her. And she was scared by that realization.

When had she started to think like that? They hadn’t known each other for too long, and still he was the one Darcy felt closer to in the facility, apart from Thor, of course.

She wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon with Steve, but he had things to do and disappeared with a quick smile before she could come up with something to tell him. Instead, she went searching for Thor, only to find Rocket and Nebula. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” she asked curiously, approaching them slowly.

Nebula’s big black eyes focused on her in such a way that made her shiver, but she didn’t say anything. “Disassembling this weapon,” Rocket said, waving towards what seemed like it had been a riffle before they had started messing with it.

“Cool,” she said slowly, “do you know where Thor is?”

Apparently, they didn’t, and somehow, Darcy ended up in Banner’s laboratory, with a book on astrophysics on her hands. She was reading it, but it could have been in another language for all she understood. She kept at it, though, because it reminded her of Jane. And Erik. And home. From time to time she would sigh, and even if it had to be bothering Dr. Banner, he didn’t comment on it. She had been there for a couple of hours when Stark walked into the lab talking obnoxiously loudly. He stopped when he saw her, but just for a couple of minutes before dragging her to one of the tables with him. She ended up helping him, handing tools and making some comments about whatever she caught when he muttered to himself. He seemed like a nice guy, it was a pity how strongly of alcohol he smelled, but Darcy supposed she couldn’t blame him. She’d most likely be doing the same if she was on his feet.

When she finally went to bed, she was so exhausted she lied her with her mind absolutely blank until she fell asleep.

After a couple of days, she could testify that having a blue and purple alien with them didn’t change their routine almost at all. Or, at least, Darcy’s. She still woke up early to train with Natasha, still spoke with Steve before having breakfast. There was one of the new things, Rocket wasn’t alone in the mornings anymore, Nebula stuck with him, which did make sense if they had known each other _before_ , but her harsh demeanor was enough to make Darcy hesitant to approach her. There was always someone who hated Darcy everywhere she went, she had a bubbly personality and she was well aware of how some people just couldn’t deal with it. Usually that didn’t bother her, not too much, at least, because she always expected it, and she dealt with it just ignoring the person. Now, doing that with an extraterrestrial being that looked like she could kill Darcy with her big toe – if Nebula even had toes, which she had no way of actually knowing – was a tad different.

Still, she tried to be amicable with Rocket, because he still seemed sad and lonely, but she never lasted long until she felt like she had to get away from the other woman’s killing eyes.

What did change Darcy’s schedule was Tony Stark. The man was always working on something, she learned fast, and he didn’t like to be alone. Or at least, he didn’t like to now. She hadn’t seen any of the remaining Avengers to actually make a move to keep him company, so that made her think it could be a recent thing. Maybe it was because of what had happened on Titan with Thanos, or maybe what had happened with Doctor Strange, or maybe he had lost someone in the crumbling. Probably, though, it was a mix of the three.

That meant that she spent her afternoons either with Thor, with Steve or with Tony, which meant it was a surprise when Black Widow came to find her right before she left her room for Tony’s lab. She looked at Natasha and waited for the woman to talk.

“Do you want to train?” the woman asked with her gruff voice.

The answer was no, but Darcy nodded nonetheless. She suspected training was not the only thing Natasha wanted, this was the first time she had actually made a move to spend time with her outside of their morning training sessions, Darcy was curious.

“Yeah, just let me change. I’ll meet you there in fifteen,” she answered, smiling at the blonde. She received a nod and then she was left alone in her room.


	11. Chapter 11

Darcy slowly sipped her water, thinking back to her encounter with Natasha. It had been weird in many ways, the first being that Natasha had never suggested they trained outside from the hours they spent together in the mornings. Darcy wasn’t a challenge for Natasha in any way, so it made sense that the only reason why she wasted her time fighting with her was so that Darcy learned. But to do it for Natasha’s benefit? Wouldn’t it be better if she went to Steve? Or someone who stood any kind of chance? As slim as it was?

All in all, Darcy had been confused when she had walked into the gym. Her confusion only grew as she neared the matts and saw that there were bags under the woman’s eyes. It had been the first time that Darcy had seen any kind of proof that things like tiresome and sleepless nights bothered Natasha. Of course, it was only logical that they would, considering she was human, no matter how many times Darcy forgot about it. And she was also an Avenger, which meant she had surely seen a lot, enough to provide plenty of sleepless nights.

“So. What’s the matter?” she had dared to voice, once she was also standing in the matts.

But such a direct approach was not the way Natasha liked to do things, as Darcy learnt next. Instead of getting an answer, she had gotten a blow directed towards her chest, which she blocked, unlike she had done that first time it had happened, in her first training with the Widow. Of course, she had been so content with it, already doing a celebratory dance in her mind, that she hadn’t seen the woman’s kick, which had been enough to send her to the floor easily.

“You have to admit” Darcy had started saying, panting, as she looked up at Nat, “that you’re proud of me for actually stopping that.”

“It was meant for you to stop it,” had been the only answer she got.

Darcy was Darcy, still after the whole mess the world had turned into, so she, for whatever reason that came to her mind, had decided to repeat Natasha’s words in a high-pitch voice. That, of course, had only made her gain another kick that sent her to the floor as she had been getting up.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, have some mercy, woman,” Darcy had been training but when the Black Widow wanted to kick you, she surely managed, even more with such a green fruit as she was. “Is it safe for me to get up or are you going to kick me again?” Darcy had wondered out loud. The only answer she had gotten had been a raised eyebrow, to which she sighed and, again, tried to stand up. Natasha, of course, had kicked her again, sending her to the floor for a third time.

Darcy had decided to just shut her trap and let Natasha speak whenever she was ready to, she had even decided not to make any jokes, as that would get her on the floor in seconds, less, milliseconds. It was almost fifteen minutes later that the blonde finally had decided to speak. “Sometimes you remind me of Clint,” she had confided. Darcy had waited – enough that the atmosphere had turned a bit tenser –, but Natasha hadn’t offered anything else, and didn’t seem like she was going to.

“Who is Clint?” she had wondered.

It had come to her at the same time that Natasha answered. Clint was _Hawkeye_ , of course. An Avenger. One that she hadn’t seen around in the facility. She wondered if he had also crumbled, but she didn’t ask, valuing her life just enough. And also having some fucking tact.

“My best friend.”

It had taken her a moment to process Natasha’s words. For a couple of seconds, Darcy hadn’t even listened to her, just assuming her answer to be “Hawkeye”, but then it had registered in her mind. Natasha’s best friend. Black Widow’s best friend. What kind of person would that be? She was sure it took balls to be this deadly lady’s best friend.

“By sometimes you mean when I’m being a pain in the ass, right?” Darcy had said, teasingly. It wasn’t like Darcy didn’t react well to feelings or anything – although she sometimes did – but she had somehow convinced herself that Natasha didn’t have feelings. She was deadly, that surely meant she didn’t let herself get involved, right? Or maybe Darcy had just seen too many movies. Whatever was the truth it just meant that Darcy didn’t know how to deal with this person she had assumed would never feel that – and even less, share it – sharing it with her.

And, because she wasn’t a completely dumbass, she had readied herself for a kick, or a blow, or whatever kind of violence that came. But nothing did. Natasha had, actually, been holding her defensive position, waiting for Darcy to strike.

“Yes,” had come after she effortlessly blocked Darcy’s tries.

Darcy set her glass on the table and put her hands in her face. It was weird, to have seen Natasha so… human, so… She didn’t have words, really. Of course, she didn’t know Natasha, not really, not after such a small amount of time being shared together, so maybe she was actually like that. Maybe, when she was letting her ward down, she was like the small bits she had let Darcy see.

But Darcy doubted the woman ever let her ward down.

The next time Natasha had spoken in their impromptu training hour had been after she had sent Darcy to the floor with a kick against her stomach. Darcy had been cradling her soft parts with her hands, panting and whining at the pain – not the worse she had gone through, okay, but what the hell, Natasha – and it had taken her the embarrassing amount of twenty seconds to realize she was being spoken to.

“…always asking to get kicked around, just like you,” Natasha had been saying. It was not difficult for her to dial back into the conversation, having so much practice at that both in High School and University. It wasn’t the same situation, because none of her teachers had been deadly Russian spies, that she knew of, of course, but still, it was one of her skills and she was going to embrace it. It had taken her exactly that determination to realize her mind had wandered and she had stopped listening again. Dammit. “…but he’s nice, I suppose.”

“That’s nice of you to say. About your best friend. That he is nice. You supposed.” Darcy had stepped back enough to avoid Natasha’s knee again, and also trying to avoid a second blow, she had repressed her smug smirk.

Natasha hadn’t said anything about Darcy’s remark, but her eyes were a but brighter than they had been at the beginning of their training. After what had to be at least another half an hour of silence and training, Natasha shifted her defensive position to an offensive one and Darcy hesitantly changed hers to a defensive one. She hadn’t gotten any reprimand or anything similar for it, so she had guessed that was what Natasha wanted. Her muscles had started to pretest, sore after all the exercise, but, sensing Natasha needed it, she kept quiet.

Another few minutes had passed until Natasha had let a huff. “Cap and Tony fought. It’s not like that’s a surprise. But this time it was about Clint.” For whatever reason, Darcy had felt like Natasha had been spitting each sentence, as if she didn’t like giving the information. Maybe she just wasn’t used to talk so much around Darcy and it was getting harder.

“What about him?” Darcy had asked, her tone had been hesitant enough that Natasha wouldn’t kick her if she didn’t like the question. Or so she had hoped.

Natasha hadn’t answered, she had just continued to send blows for Darcy to block, none of them too hard that she would end up on the floor again. After a couple of minutes more, she had finally seemed to give up. “Cap didn’t look for him after we got back from Wakanda. Tony insulted him and told him to do it now. They both agreed that I should be the one to check.”

And that had been enough for Darcy to drop the defensive stance all-together. “They want you to check if your best friend is alive or has crumbled?” Darcy had wondered, horrified.

“Yes.” After her answer, Natasha had sent another blow, noticing Darcy had abandoned her defensive position.

Sprawled on the floor, she had frowned up to Natasha. “That’s horrible. They should do it.”

Natasha had let the corner of her lips curl, but the expression hadn’t had any trace of happiness or humor. Honestly, it had scared Darcy. Back into the kitchen, Darcy thought about that and wondered how had her friend – because after the conversation in the gym, Darcy refused to think of Natasha as any other thing – managed to make that horrible expression seem so fitting in her face.

She also recalled Nat’s answer. “They probably should,” she had granted, “but they are not going to.”

Darcy had let a couple of minutes pass – or what had felt like a couple of minutes, she wasn’t good at measuring time, even less when everything felt so tense – before she asked. “And you don’t know if he survived the crumbling, right, the snap?” she hadn’t needed the blonde’s answer to know, of course. “What are you going to do?”

“Call him, first.”

And that had thrown Darcy off. Did phones work? Were the people who made them work, working right now? The reality was that Darcy had no idea about what was going on out there, she didn’t know if people had gone on with their lives or if they were in the post-apocalyptical movie situation that she had both guessed about and saw in her trip to the facility. She also wondered what she would do, if she had been in a position where she didn’t know the Avengers. She didn’t know. Now, sitting in the kitchen, with a glass of water in her hand, she didn’t know any more than she had known down in the gym by Nat, and just thinking about that made her head hurt.

“That’s… I guess it would make sense,” Darcy had answered, slowly, doubts plaguing her mind. “Is there service?” she had dared to ask.

Natasha’s answer came quickly. “No. Not here at least. Definitely not where he is if, he’s still here. We have special phones that Stark made. For emergencies. They will work.”

There hadn’t been much words after that, and when Natasha had finally called the training off, Darcy’s muscles were sore and screaming at her, but she felt good, probably the endorphins. And having helped a friend get something off of their chest, that always felt good.

She remembered what Natasha had told her before she had left the gym. She had looked right at her eyes, letting the cold of her gaze wrap around her, pinning her to the place. “You are easy to talk to,” had been her words. “That’s a good skill to have.”

Darcy had known what Natasha had been talking about. Well, not really. But she knew she had meant that it was a good skill to have when you’re a spy. And for some reason, that disturbed Darcy enough to make her hang alone in the kitchen, looking at nothing and taking small sips of her drink.

“Darcy!” Thor’s blooming voice startled her enough for her water to go everywhere. When she turned to him, she saw him with his head in one of the drawers and she had to fight a snort. He turned to her and smiled brightly – but still less brightly than he used to when she had first met him. These days, he always seemed to have a shadow over him, and she saw it clearly whenever he smiled or laughed. “I bethought you were going to Stark’s workshop,” he said.

Darcy nodded. “Yeah, big guy, in a moment.” She would go there, maybe even ask about Clint. Probably not. At least the workshop would be a good place for her to just let her mind wander without someone noticing – Stark would not notice, that was for sure – and still not being alone.

She sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Again, it took me just too long to bring this update to you, but sometimes I can't help it, uni keeps me busy and I don't like writing when I don't have inspirationn (duh) soooooo yeah. Also I've been working in other stuff that I'll post some day too, soooooo yeah
> 
> Also this was more of a filler than actually plot, but I wanted Darcy and Natasha to bond, it wasn't even planned, this whole chapter was just something that I felt like writing, and I did it in like 2 hours (which is surprising because it usually takes me for ever to write a chapter)
> 
> Also, I'm planning this story to be about 20 chapters long, as you might see that I recently added. The number might change but not much, so yeah, around that.
> 
> And finally, before I say goodbye, I'm inviting you all to visit a stucky fic that I posted recently [What's Past Is Prologue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16020239)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow, it took me A MONTH to post this chapter... I'm terribly sorry! I'm hoping this won't be happening again because I want to finish this story by the end of october, I want to participate on nanowrimo and I know that it wouldn't be great from me to just stop posting this until that finishes. So I'm going to try to finish them (i have an outline of the story so I know what will be happening in every chapter, I just need to finish it...), and if I can, I'll post them as soon as possible!
> 
> Again, I'm sorry for the late update, but at least it's a longish chapter! Not much action BUT EXCITING THINGS WILL BE HAPPENING OVER THE NEXT CHAPTERS!

Tony had been in the facility for three days. Three days filled with animosity towards Steve, which the blond didn’t mind returning, apparently. Maybe it was not animosity, per se, but there was a clear hostility between the two that was going to make Darcy stab herself. It makes everything uncomfortable, including the stupid, fruitless meetings that had always been boring. Now, they were boring and uncomfortable.

She had tried bringing up the topic to Steve – she was the one she considered her friend, she barely knew Tony after all – and the only thing she had been given had been a noncommittal answer that gave off no information. Basically, he had told her that it wasn’t her business. The thing is that Darcy knew she usually pried into things that were none of her business, but this time it involved her. Well, no. It didn’t involve her, but it was definitely affecting her, the whole team, really. It was almost as if they were divided into teams. It was immature and stupid, and Darcy really wanted to shout at all of them.

She thought about shouting a bit at Tony as she pushed the doors of his workshop open. The view that greeted her wasn’t much different than what it had been the past times she had been there. Tony hunched over his computer with a stained tee, messy hair and dark circles under his eyes. Actually, now that Darcy thought of it, it was the same t-shirt he had been wearing the day before, and he looked even more tired. When it hit her it almost felt like a physical blow. Tony hadn’t slept, he had spent the whole night on his computer, looking for answers. It wasn’t like Darcy could judge him, if she was as smart as him, she would probably exhaust herself looking for an answer too – she guessed it was what he was doing. But it was her job – the team’s job – to prevent the guy to exhaust himself to death. So, even if she would most likely have been doing the same in his position, she frowned and put a stern face over the smile she had been sporting when she had walked in.

“You need to sleep,” she told him. He looked up to her for a couple of seconds and then his eyes just went back to the screen. Wow, dismissal, cold. Still, she insisted. “C’mon, this will still be here when you come back. Just for a couple of hours, Tony,” she said gently.

“No, thanks,” he answered airily, tapping a few keys of the keyboard and not lifting his eyes to her again.

“I was not suggesting it, dude,” Darcy answered. He seemed set on being difficult but that wasn’t going to make her back off. Quite the contrary, actually. “You need sleep, your brain is going to end up dry if you just stay awake forever. As exciting as whatever you’re doing seems.” It was probably the wrong thing to say considering that what he was trying to do had nothing to do with science experiments or discoveries and more with saving the world. But still.

“You do know that you are in _my_ facility, right? I can just kick you out,” he stated. It was a threat, but it seemed empty. Maybe it was because you could hear the tiredness in his voice.

“Yeah, you could, but for that you would have to speak, and you’ll be too tired to do it,” she shot back.

He looked up at her and sneered. “Get out of my lab, Lewis,” he said.

“Only if you do too, Stark,” she retorted, making a bad impression of his tone.

He stayed looking at her in silence until he huffed one word, “out” and went back to his computer. Of course, Darcy had no plans of getting out, no matter how much the rude crazy scientist told her to.

Instead of moving, she raised an eyebrow. “Have you at least eaten something?” she asked, being only met with silence. It was enough of an answer. “How much time do you think you could last without sleeping or eating?” she asked, her tone as normal as she could get it. “I’m asking because burying you in the backyard could give us a bad reputation.”

He looked at her, unimpressed. “Is this why they let you stay? Your mother-henning and bad jokes?”

She pursed her lips, shook her head and turned to the door. As she was leaving, she heard Tony mutter something underneath his breath, but it was too low for her to get it, so she just left. In less than ten minutes, she was back with a bowl filled with pasta, some lettuce, tomatoes and nuts, she left it next to his computer and looked expectantly at him. He looked up and then down at the salad bowl, he nodded – Darcy wondered if he was having a mental debate on whether to accept the food or not, if it was like that, she hoped he would, he needed some food – slowly, he took the bowl and set it on his lap, focusing again on his computer screen.

Darcy took the wise decision of not bothering him again so soon and just sat in the old couch propped against one wall. She was scrolling through her twitter feed when Tony spoke. She only heard him because she had been refreshing her feed and hadn’t really been focused on it, so she was glad he had decided that moment to speak because it would have been embarrassing if she had to ask him to repeat himself.

“I’ll sleep as soon as I finish what I’m doing,” is what he said. “So you can stop…” he looked up from the screen a couple of seconds, “whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“I’m caring. It’s what I do,” she answered, pocketing her phone. Tony seemed more inclined to give her conversation now, for whatever reason that might be. “It’s what I did for Jane, anyways, she continued. I’m basically the reason why she was still alive to receive that nobel prize. I think _I_ should be getting that. Without me, half of her research wouldn’t exist.

“That is one way of seeing it,” he conceded. Then, he typed something else. He must have felt Darcy’s intense stare, because he sighed and, still focused in whatever he was doing, he said “ask or one of us might combust.”

“What exactly are you doing?” she wondered.

He didn’t answer for a couple of minutes and then he sighed, looking up at her and giving her his full attention for the first time she had walked into the lab. “I’m looking for energy spikes around the time of the snaps,” he said.

“Why?” she pushed.

“Because it’s the only thing that I can think of that might be of help,” he answered honestly. Darcy couldn’t really say anything about this, considering she had packed all her stuff and left where she was living at when the snap happened just in the hope of being helpful. It was more likely that Tony would be successfully helpful than her. Even more considering so far she had just pointed out the _possibility_ that their friends might not be dead, perhaps she had even given them a branch where they would waste time that could have been spent in finding a good solution if there even was one.

They could not ignore that it was likely that there wasn’t a way to solve this whole mess. Maybe they couldn’t do anything to reverse the snap. _Maybe_ their friends would be gone forever.

“What happens if you find any?” she asked, standing up. She walked towards Tony and looked at the screen, but she couldn’t make any sense of what was in it. She would have guessed that so many time spent with Jane and her science would have taught her some.

“We go and figure out what happened,” Tony answered decisively.

“Maybe whatever you find is really nothing,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s a possibility,” he nodded.

They stayed in silence for a couple of seconds both of them looking at the screen. It seemed to be pretty automatic, but Darcy didn’t know much about computers, or science, or energy sparks, so she asked. “Do you have to be here for the search?” she asked. The answer was a no, delivered with enough tightness that she knew Tony understood why she asked. “Then go take a nap and I swear to wake up if I see anything.”

“Do you even know how to know it has found something?” he asked in a mean voice.

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m guessing a message will appear somewhere in the screen. And if it doesn’t, then I’m pretty sure FRIDAY can tell me when it’s done.”

Tony looked conflicted. “I will kick you out if you don’t come get me immediately after it finds anything.”

“I swear, if there’s anything to be found, I’ll even run to your room. Now go take a nap.”

“Using FRIDAY will be enough,” Tony said, haughtily. “No need to run to my room. I’m an engaged man, after all.” Then, he stopped, and his face tightened. “Was.”

Darcy hadn’t even thought to ask about Pepper Potts, she hadn’t even wondered why the woman wasn’t at the safest place in the earth, when her fiancé owned it. She had an answer now. She smiled sadly at the man and he looked away. “Go to sleep, Tony, I’ll tell you if anything happens.”

He nodded and left for his room.

Some would think that staying at Tony Stark’s workshop unsupervised would be fun, but honestly, Darcy got bored pretty fast. Maybe half an hour had passed since Tony had left when the door to the workshop opened, pulling her stare from the screen to welcome the company – unless it was Stark, then her plan was to just kick him out. It wasn’t Tony. It was Natasha.

“How the heck did you know I was here?” she asked.

Natasha looked at her funny. “You told Thor. Was it supposed to be a secret?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Damn woman and her raised eyebrows, Darcy thought.

“No,” she answered hesitantly. “Why are you here?”

“I called Clint,” she said, then she looked around the workshop, as if to check that they were alone. That gesture was enough to leave it clear that Natasha did not open to people, not even people from her team. But then, why the fuck was she opening up to Darcy? She was a nobody. A nobody no one wanted to tell secrets to. Not even her friends during high school. And now she had the Black Widow confessing private stuff to her? It was surreal.

“And?” she pressed, because the fact that it was surreal didn’t meant that Darcy was going to let the occasion pass.

“And he’s okay.” Then, she looked at a point above Darcy’s head. “Not okay. Two of his kids crumbled.”

“Hawkeye has kids!?” Darcy asked with a frown. That was new information. How did someone from this industry, a superhero, the only full human of the team, have a family?

Nat’s glare was enough to shut her up. He has, and you don’t want me to think you’re going to tell a single soul about this.”

“Roger that. Not that I was planning on just telling people about others’ lives. It just surprised me.” By the nod that came from the blonde woman, it was something that happened often after it was revealed that Hawkeye had kids.

“So… What’s going to happen with that now?” she asked, glancing at the screen. The numbers were still moving and there was no alert on the side of the screen, FRIDAY hadn’t made a comment either.

“I’m going to pick him up and bring him here. He needs to be with us when we figure out how to make this better.”

“And his family is okay with him just leaving?”

There was a couple of minutes of silence but eventually, Natasha spoke. “I’m not trying to understand Clint’s family, because families are weird, but I think they all want him to get his other too kids back,” she said slowly. “They have faith in him. In us. To bring them their family back.”

“I hope that happens,” Darcy said softly.

“I’m leaving now,” Natasha said, her voice a bit harder than it had been while speaking about her best friend. “Just wanted you to know. I’m not going to be around for training. You should talk to Steve about it, he used to train some SHIELD operatives and it should do you good to not just fight against me.

Nat left soon after Darcy promised her to not ditch training all together, and she was alone again, left with just looking to a screen with information she didn’t understand.

Well past two hours later, an alert in the center of the screen appeared, followed by a ping that would have caught her attention even if she hadn’t had every sense focused for that exact thing. The message said that an energy spike that matched the parameters Tony had set up when he had started looking had been found. In San Francisco.

The first thing she did was to tell FRIDAY to wake Tony up and deliver the news. Then, she cried, just a little bit, at the hope of getting her life back.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I wanted to finish this before NaNoWriMo? Well, I didn't. So everything is a mess. But hey! I bring you an exciting chapter today! We're nearing the end, guys. Well, not really, there're still 8 more chapters, but aaaaaah!, excitement!

It surprised Darcy how little her life changed after finding that, at least for the first few days. When she woke up the day after finding Tony’s energy spike, she was surprised to find Steve at her door.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, she didn’t know if she had to worry or not. If something had happened, he wouldn’t be telling her, but she couldn’t think of any other reason why he could be there.

“We have training, right?” he asked, smiling brightly.

She paused and looked at him, noticing, for the first time, that he was in gym clothes. “But…” she started, then stopped. Then started again. “Tony told you about what he found, right?” she asked, frowning.

Tony had made it sound like an important thing, he had kept himself awake for days to find something like that, and Steve was just going to… Ignore it? Train with her as he would on a normal day? It didn’t make sense.

“He did,” Steve answered, turning serious just for a moment. Then, he smiled softly, and definitely not as brightly as before. “He did, but there’s not much we can really do right now. We just wait and see what he thinks we should do.”

“I thought you were the team leader,” she said. All this tension between them since Tony had come back and Steve was just going to hand him the power to decide what was going to be their next step. Darcy was sure that if this had happened in 2016 when they had had that fight they were still angsty about, everything would have gone so much smoothly. “You’re the Regina George of the team. Maybe Tony is Cady Heron and he’s trying to steal your empire?”

He looked at her blankly. “Do people even understand you when you speak?”

And Darcy, of course, decided to take it as a personal offence. “If you haven’t watched Mean Girls, you don’t deserve to take Natasha’s place in my training.”

“Yeah, and surely Nat has seen it,” he rolled her eyes.

“She has. Of course. We make references constantly when we train,” she lied. Natasha probably had seen it, who hadn’t? Captain America, apparently. Darcy needed to change that… When the situation was better, of course. “If you can’t keep up with it, I don’t think you deserve to be Regina George anymore.” Tony Stark had _definitely_ watched Mean Girls.

“How about this, we train and then, if there’s still nothing from Tony, we watch the film.”

It felt like a bucket of cold reality had fell on her. She put her serious face on and nodded. “Just let me change. Let’s meet on the gym in ten minutes.”

Steve had obviously sensed the change in her mood, because he also became more serious. He nodded, turned, and left.

Their training was both harder and easier than how it was with Natasha. On one hand, Steve was obviously not putting his whole efforts in it, and while she doubted the Black Widow did, she faked it better than him. And even with him not really using everything he had in him, Darcy wasn’t able to beat him, not even a bit. He was stronger and incredibly fast, nothing like Nat had told her big guys were supposed to be.

“This isn’t fair,” she panted.

“It isn’t,” he admitted. The jerk had a huge smile in his face.

“I’m going to get Natasha to teach me how to kick your ass,” she threatened, still not being able to say three words in a row without having to stop to take a deep breath.

“Isn’t she already teaching you? I think you might just be incapable of doing it,” he said, with an annoying tone that Darcy was at least 50% sure he was faking. His eyes twinkled. 60%.

“So… San Francisco,” she said, panting, after a while.

He blocked her fist and nodded. “San Francisco.”

“Do you know what might be there?” she asked, trying to hit him again, and failing.

“I don’t know,” he answered, apparently not distracted by her conversation. How could he still be so focused? It wasn’t fair, she got distracted way easier. She was getting distracted by her own distraction tactic, she realized.

“So you’re going there blind?” she frowned. She didn’t know much about the Avengers, and what she did know wasn’t even really far from being reckless, but that seemed like too much of a risk, and at a horrible moment. The world was missing half of its heroes, they should be preparing themselves to fight Thanos, but not risking their lives in the process!

“Pretty much,” he answered, nodding. What an idiot.

“You do realize how much of a stupid move that is, right?” she mumbled. She had dropped her stance and Steve took advantage of that sweeping a foot under hers and making her fall on her ass.

“It’s not like we can do much,” he said, looking at her for a couple of seconds before offering his hand to help her up.

“Let me go with you,” she asked. It sounded more like a demand, but it was all the same in Darcy’s book. At least in this situation. In the back of her mind, she thought that Jane would have answered that with something like “or in any situation at all.”

“And you’re saying our plan is stupid?” he snorted.

She frowned and dropped his hand, offended. “Look, Darce, I know you want to be helpful, we all want that, but I don’t think that you should go. You’re training, yes, but I can’t say it’s enough.” She frowned and tried to kick him so that he would fall to the floor. She didn’t manage. “See what I’m saying?”

The rest of the training session was pretty much silent. Darcy knew, technically, that her suggestion of going with them was stupid. She didn’t have any kind of useful abilities. She would probably just slow them down. So, she understood Steve, but she still didn’t like that she would have to sit on her ass and wait for them to return.

In the meeting, Steve showed signs of having listened to her. “We can’t just go there blindly,” he said, his gaze pausing for a second on her face before he continued looking at the team. “Tony agrees, he sent a drone and nothing worth mentioning has really happened. We are sending a team, three people, to see if it’s safe to go there. When we know, Princess Shuri, Banner and Stark will go there and do their science.”

Maybe Darcy had underestimated Steve. He was a strategist and going there full force was just stupid. This wasn’t much better but were there any other options? Darcy couldn’t think of something less risky.

And even if Darcy already knows she won’t be on the team – because it would be stupid, she is useless, she can’t help, she doesn’t b…– it still makes her feel bad.

Steve, Nebula and Thor will be leaving tomorrow morning.

When the meeting is finally over, getting out of that room feels very different to all the other times she has done the exact same thing, because for the first time, it feels like they’ve done progress. She waits until everyone has left the room, and Steve, as if he had read her mind, also waits.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he comments, sitting down tiredly. He still sounds like he’s willing to listen to her, even if he has already made up his mind.

She appreciates it.

“Look, there must be something I can do,” she says.

“Darce,” he sighs. He rubs his face. “You have to understand that I can’t put you in danger.” Before she can say anything, he continues. “You’re a civilian. It’s not your job to go there.”

“My job is to be a crazy scientist assistant. And my crazy scientist is dead. Or has crumbled. Or however it is that I’m supposed to call it. She’s not here. So I can’t help _her_ save the world. If not, believe me, I’d be doing that.” She says, and there are tears in her eyes that she really, really doesn’t want to let fall. “I need to do something Steve.”

“I don’t think there’s anything for you to do,” he answers softly.

They stay in silence for a couple of minutes and then Darcy lets herself fall to the chair next to Steve’s. “You could take Tony with you,” she mumbles. “He’s both a fighter and a scientist, he’s prepared if there are dangers and he actually knows what we have to look for.”

Steve takes a couple of seconds to answer. He’s looking at his hands, which means she can’t see his eyes, but she would swear they are filled with sadness, because somehow, his voice also is. “I can’t risk it.”

She lets the words set, still looking at him. “What do you mean?”

“Tony is only human,” he says. “He has his fancy suit and he has twinkled around enough to make it resist a lot. But under all that, he’s still human. Thor, Nebula and I are… More. Not so breakable, I guess. I don’t want to take anyone…” he pauses, just for a couple of seconds, “…easy to kill.”

But somehow, Darcy knows it’s not just that.

“You have faith in him,” she notices.

It shouldn’t surprise her as much as it does, Steve and Tony had been working together for a while before the whole Sokovia Accords had happened. They must have been friends. And this whole situation couldn’t have changed that.

“What?” he finally looks up to her and she can’t help the soft smile. He looks younger than he has looked since Darcy has been staying at the Compound.

She continues. “That’s why you don’t want to risk him. You think he actually can do something.” It’s not just that Tony is breakable. Is that Steve genuinely thinks that he will find the answer. He would give his life for Tony’s. He would risk himself, and Nebula, and Thor for him.

He stops. “Yes.” The way he says the word makes it feel like it’s a secret finally let out from a cupboard. It feels like he’s confessing a secret. It feels like he’s relieved to say it.

“More than you.” She continues.

“Most likely.”

And Darcy wants to cry because of course Steve would risk his life if that meant Tony would have a chance to make everything right. In the small time she had known him, that had become obvious. She doesn’t cry, though. She just stays with him in the empty meeting room, and eventually grabs his hand. By the way he grips hers, she knows it’s the right thing to do.

The next day, she and the rest of the avengers – and associates – are in a room that allows them to see what the hell is happening. Instead of the six hours that a usual fight would have lasted, in it only takes them three to get there. Darcy focuses on the monitors so much that eventually the rest of the room feels like it doesn’t exist, and when Bruce Banner touches her arm to offer her some food, she jumps.

“Thanks,” she mutters, fighting herself so her eyes don’t immediately go to the monitor.

Banner doesn’t miss it. “They’ll be fine,” he says. “I know how stressing watching missions can be, I’ve done a great deal of that during these years.”

Darcy doesn’t know what to say so she just nods. When Banner sits next to her to look at the monitors, she doesn’t complain.

They have finally found something weird. There’s a van in a roof and the device that Tony and Banner had given Steve goes crazy the closer they get to it. She can see Steve’s stern look from Nebula’s camera. His mouth is moving but the cameras don’t have sound, so they can’t hear what he says. Darcy imagines he must be commanding Thor to stay there, keeping guard while he and Nebula go up, because that’s what they do.

She alternates from the monitor showing what Thor sees and the ones that show Steve and Nebula. When they get to the roof, the see that the van is not the only thing there. There’re also some kind of weird machines that almost resemble a piano.

Darcy is in the middle of thinking that it might just be something for a party when someone appears and kicks Nebula on the side hard enough to throw her a few feet away. She falls to the floor hard. Steve tries to react but whoever it is that is there is fast and very talented. They are besting Steve.


End file.
